Do you remember a year ago when the Democratic National Committee was putting out press releases headlined ''President Bush Deceives The American People"?

Yawn. What's new? But last summer the Bush Lie Of The Week was all to do with Saddam trying to buy uranium from Niger. CNN and Co. replayed endlessly the critical 16 words from the president's 2003 State of the Union Address:

''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Sixteen words that could break a presidency! Bush ''misled every one of us,'' huffed Sen. John Kerry. ''It's beginning to sound like Watergate,'' said Howard Dean. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man the CIA sent to Africa to investigate, wrote a piece for the New York Times titled ''What I didn't find in Africa.''

Can you guess what he didn't find, dear reader? That's right, he didn't find a big package of uranium bearing the address label ''S. Hussein, Suite 27, the Saddam Hussein Centre for Armageddon Studies, Saddam Hussein Parkway, Baghdad.'' Ambassador Wilson said relax, he'd been to Niger, spent "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people,'' and there's nothing going on.

Well, on Wednesday in London, Lord Butler will publish his report into the quality of the intelligence on which rested Britain's case for going to war with Iraq. The report is said to be critical of some of Tony Blair's claims, supportive of others. And, among the latter, he says that the statements about Iraq and Niger are justified and supported by the intelligence. In other words, the British Government did learn that Saddam Hussein did seek significant quantities of uranium from Africa. As a gazillion e-mails a day shrieked from my in-box back then, ''BUSH LIED!!!!!!" So where exactly in that State of the Union observation is the lie?

"The growing disaster in the Darfur region of Sudan, which may have already killed as many people as have died in the fighting in Iraq over the last year and a quarter, demands that Secretary of State Colin Powell and the U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan, go beyond the kind of welcome but government-manipulated visits we saw this week. Without tough and immediate actions by Washington and the U.N. Security Council, a half-million people or more could die before the end of the year from Sudanese government-sponsored attacks and the starvation and disease that inevitably follow."

"Any illusion that Sudan's leaders are now prepared to act responsibly without being compelled to do so should have been dispelled by their cruel and cynical behavior during the Powell and Annan visits.

"The Bush administration has been far too timid in proposing punitive sanctions only for Janjaweed leaders. That remains the main thrust of a Security Council resolution that Washington is circulating. It would be much more effective to put direct pressure on the leaders of Sudan's government, who can shut down the attacks quickly.

"The Security Council remains divided between the Sudanese government's critics and apologists and has been unwilling to take strong action.

"If the Security Council still refuses to act, the United States, the European Union and the African countries that assert a claim to continental leadership, like Nigeria and South Africa, should work together to convince Sudan's leaders that their government will become a pariah if it does not stop what looks increasingly like genocide in Darfur."