U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd's recent town-hall meeting in Tallahassee illustrated an abiding resentment over how the Bush administration has manipulated --- some would say lied about --- intelligence to justify the war with Iraq. Boyd said that the president "made a mistake" by attacking Iraq. Boyd is right, but the attack was only part of the mistake.

The manipulation of intelligence in the months leading up to the war was a more startling crime, one that deserves more attention --- especially as President Bush prepares to confront the nation in his State of the Union address on Jan. 20.

Is it fair to say that the administration lied? After revelations that part of Bush's 2003 State of the Union address was based on forged documents, the Bush team seemed to fall into the worst kind of denial. The most glaring example happened on the set of "Meet the Press" on Sept. 28, when Condoleezza Rice was asked how the corruption found its way into the State of the Union.

Tim Russert recounted the history of the false intelligence reports that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Niger to use in developing nuclear weapons: The administration wanted to use questionable documents to show that Iraq was a nuclear threat in an October 2002 speech; the CIA told the administration that the information was not reliable; the false information wasn't used in the October speech but was used in the more important State of the Union address three months later. Between October 2002 and January 2003, Rice said, "I didn't remember" that the CIA said not to use the information.

She didn't remember? Nobody in the White House remembered?

The information in question was later determined to be based on forged documents. Nobody seems to know who forged the documents, but it took the International Atomic Energy Agency only a few hours to determine that the documents were forged. One letter, dated Oct. 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger minister of foreign affairs who had been out of office since 1989.

Rice probably forgot about that.

Another letter, allegedly from Niger President Tandja Mamadou, had text with inaccuracies so egregious, a senior IAEA official told The New Yorker, that "they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet."

But Rice probably forgot how to Google.

I'll never forget watching Rice say --- over and over --- that she didn't remember the CIA told her not to use the information. I was speechless.

She forgot.

This is the same woman who lectured Rep. Boyd --- who served in Vietnam as an infantry officer --- about the lesson of Vietnam. Rice seems pretty confident of her memory in this area, yet seems disturbingly aloof about her memory problems concerning the 2003 State of the Union address. This is the kind of willful deception that Sen. Bob Graham said was worthy of impeachment --- if only we had a Congress that had the backbone to seriously examine the matter.

By the standards set in the Clinton impeachment, Bush's crimes and misdemeanors are worthy of impeachment. Of course, getting testimony from folks as memory challenged as Rice might pose a problem. But --- for the importance of our international credibility and getting to the bottom of the forgery mystery --- I think a Senate impeachment trial is warranted. Unfortunately, no member of the House of Representatives seems to be willing to risk the political capital necessary to file articles of impeachment.

So, for now, we will have to watch President Bush stand at the speaker's lectern to once again deliver a State of the Union address. I doubt that he will address the serious issue of forged documents and knowingly deceiving the American people in last year's State of the Union, but I think he should. If he can remember.

Mike Pope is the letters editor of the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at 599-2173 or mpope@tallahassee.com.