The Sixteen Words are back, but the media are altering them to fit the agenda.

The original quote from the State of the Union speech:

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

The media is attempting to rewrite this into saying that Bush said Hussein was specifically trying to get uranium from Niger. Andrew Sullivan has been tracking this, with many examples of the lie.

The quotes from Sullivan's links:

The Christian Science Monitor:

• No evidence was found to indicate Niger provided uranium to Iraq, as President Bush stated in his State of the Union speech. Kay said that one other African country, which he would not name, did offer to supply Iraq with uranium, but did not follow through.

The discerning reader will note that if the above statement is combined with Bush's actual quote, then Bush is even further justified.

CNN:

Bush cited the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium connection in his 2003 State of the Union address as part of the rationale for going to war with Iraq.

New York Times:

In the summer, the conflict broke into the open when Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said that Mr. Tenet had been primarily responsible for not stripping from the president's State of the Union address an insupportable claim that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger. Mr. Tenet and his allies were enraged, and Stephen J. Hadley, Ms. Rice's deputy, eventually took the blame.

Newsweek:

In his January ’03 State of the Union address, President Bush, citing British intelligence reports, repeated the charge that the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium from Niger.

See how it's done? Pretty soon the altered quote will be treated as an established fact. With a tip of the hat to Robert, an excellent example of leaving a false impression in the reader.