It is a pretty tough position to be in. It is a real bummer when you attack someone for a full year and then all of a sudden your source is completely and utterly discredited. It was not just bloggers who kept up the Bush Lied™ mantra either. Rep Gephardt said "President Bush's factual lapse in his State of the Union address can not be simply dismissed as an intelligence failure," and Rep Kucinich said that the speech "erodes the credibility of the administration."
But enough of that...my purpose is not to make anyone feel bad. I'm not trying to make you eat your own words. I'm here to help.
The first thing you need to know is that this revelation does not mean you have to change your position on Iraq or the President. If you have strong feelings against the war or President Bush, I truly hope it was not based entirely upon something as petty as "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
I'm sure that is a big relief, but here is the hard part: You really should acknolwedge that you were mistaken in your accusations that the President lied when he made the yellowcake statement back in 2003. I know it is hard to say you are sorry, but remember that you aren't apologizing for your position on the issue. You are just acknowledging that you were wrong about Bush lying in this particular case.
To help you with this, I've created the following boilerplate apology which you are invited to copy and use:
On Saturday, July 11, 2004, I realized that I was wrong. In the past, I declared that Bush Lied™ about Yellowcake but I now understand that he did not. It is now apparent to me that Wilson was the one speaking falsehood as he explained away intelligence which he had never even seen. Please understand that I was not lying when I accused the President; I was merely a victim of bad intelligence. I was wrong about the validity and intent of the 16 words and I retract all my false statements about them and the man who made them.
