US Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet has taken the blame for President George W. Bush's January claim that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material from Africa.

In a surprise statement last week, Tenet said the reference -- based on information from Britain -- should not have been included in the president's January 28 State of the Union address because it had not been corroborated by US intelligence.

The White House has said that as far as they are concerned, the issue is over and done with, but Democrats refused to let the matter die, with the party's biggest guns taking to the floor of the Senate, holding news conferences, and taking to the airwaves to keep the controversy alive.

One leading Democrat accused the White House of a broad pattern of dissemblance in making its case for waging war on Iraq.

"The misleading statement about African uranium is not an isolated incident. There is a significant amount of troubling evidence that it was part of a pattern of exaggerations and misleading statements," Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said on the floor of the US Senate.

"It was not inadvertent. It was not a slip ... It was calculated. It was misleading."

Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, one of the most senior Democrats in Congress, decried what he called a "bankrupt" US policy toward Iraq, which revealed "flawed, distorted and failed intelligence," Kennedy told NBC television.

"But there's a broader issue, and that is the failed policy toward Iraq. It's a bankrupt policy, it's a policy that adrift."

"Some of those in the White House are trying to pin it on George Tenet. I think the buck stops in the White House," Kennedy said.

Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich, one of nine Democrats vying for the party's presidential nomination, called on the Bush administration to provide information about what he said is a number of unsettled questions.

"What about the statements President Bush and others made about Iraq's "vast stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons?" he said. "What about the evidence of the connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda?

"Could these claims, made repeatedly by the administration, also be false?" he asked.

The leader of Senate Democrats was more measured in his tone, even while reprising Democrats' calls for a more expansive investigation.

"I think before we face the real prospect of lost credibility abroad and here at home, I think it's critical that we clarify and make sure everyone understands what is fact and what is not," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said.

Outside the Congress, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean kept up his almost daily drumbeat of accusations against the White House Tuesday.

"It only becomes more and more clear every day what a mistake this administration made in launching a pre-emptive war in Iraq," the Democratic presidential contender said.

"The evidence mounts that not only did the administration mislead the American people and the world in making its case for war but that it failed to plan adequately for the peace.

"Today, we are paying the price in lives lost, in a 100 billion dollar price tag that only rises daily, and in the toll on our reputation around the world."

Republican Senator John Cornyn said Democrats are going out of their way to miss the big picture -- that despite the intelligence gaffe, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.

"The fact that rape rooms, mass murders and torture are gone is far more important to Iraqis that politicians trying to score political points," the Texas senator said.

"The goals of security, prosperity and democracy are not advanced by partisan rancor, and I hope my colleagues join me in finding ways to rebuild Iraq for Iraqis -- and stop trying to find ways to attack our president for political gain."

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