I just knew it would come to this.

… Anyone who saw how black entertainers were trotted across the stage of the 2000 Republican Convention - and before a national television audience - to disguise the near total absence of blacks among the convention's voting delegates would not be surprised by what happened last Sunday.

That's when Powell and Rice were put on stage. They made the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows to deny that the president had stretched the truth - maybe even lied - when he repeatedly told the nation that Iraq had a huge supply of weapons of mass destruction and would soon use them against us.

… Whatever the case, now that his charges don't hold up the president has given Powell and Rice a leading role in his effort to make this problem go away. But don't feel sorry for them because they are willing dupes.

We didn't hear much from Powell and Rice when the war in Iraq was going well. Back then the media spotlight was hogged by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose prewar talk about Saddam's scary weapons helped Bush convince a lot of trusting people in this country that the Iraqi leader was a menace who had to be taken down.

But now that Bush's justification for war has come under a withering attack, Rumsfeld has faded into the background and Rice and Powell - the president's top black appointees - have been sent out before the TV cameras to put a good face on a bad situation.