It's the credibility, stupid!

The nice thing about AP is that when AP gets it, the story goes out everywhere. Huge papers, small-town papers, aggregators, the world.

Jennifer Loven's lede:

The White House defense of President Bush's now-disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa has evolved over the last two weeks: blame others, stonewall, bury questions in irrelevant information and, above all, hope it will go away.

So far, none has worked.

In question: 16 words in Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union speech: ''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

At issue: the credibility of the president's allegation ...

Of course, her story ends with the classic:

Only time will tell.

But then that would be up to us, wouldn't it?