WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats said White House acknowledgment that President Bush misspoke when he said Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Africa justifies a broad review of how the administration used prewar intelligence on Iraq.

"This is a very important admission," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said Tuesday. "It's a recognition that we were provided faulty information. And I think it's all the more reason why a full investigation of all of the facts surrounding this situation be undertaken."

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said: "The reported White House statements only reinforce the importance of an inquiry into why the information about the bogus uranium sales didn't reach the policy-makers during 2002 and why, as late as the president's State of the Union address in January 2003, our policy-makers were still using information which the intelligence community knew was almost certainly false."

The Bush administration used purported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a major justification for the war, and the failure to find such weapons so far has generated intense criticism from some Democrats.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer set off a furor Monday when, under questioning by reporters, he acknowledged that Bush was incorrect in his State of the Union speech when he said "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Today, Fleischer said "this type of information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech."

But, he added, "this is a classic issue of hindsight is 20-20."

"There's a bigger picture here," Fleischer told reporters traveling with Bush to South Africa. He repeated administration assertions that Saddam Hussein was trying to reconstitute a weapons of mass destruction program.

Other White House officials elaborated on Fleischer's remarks Tuesday, saying the United States had additional evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions.

Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that when Bush made the speech, there was other intelligence indicating Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from several countries in Africa. This other information, however, was not detailed or specific enough to prove such a contention, he said.

The claim rested significantly on a letter or letters between officials in Iraq and Niger obtained by European intelligence agencies. The communications are now accepted as forged.

Anton acknowledged such on Tuesday, but also said the documents were not the sole basis for the Iraq-Africa statement in Bush's speech.

"Because of this lack of specificity, this reporting alone did not rise to the level of inclusion in a presidential speech," Anton said. "That said, the issue of Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium from abroad was not an element underpinning the judgment reached by most intelligence agencies that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

On Sunday, Joseph Wilson, an envoy sent to Africa to investigate allegations about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, said the Bush administration manipulated his findings, possibly to strengthen the rationale for war.

Wilson insisted in an NBC-TV interview that his doubts about the purported Iraq-Niger connection reached the highest levels of government, including Vice President Dick Cheney's office. In fact, he said, Cheney's office inquired about the purported Niger-Iraq link.

Fleischer said Monday that Cheney did not request information about Wilson's mission to Niger, was not informed of his mission and was not aware of it until press reports accounted for it.

Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, wrote to Bush on Tuesday outlining a letter he received from the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding the forged Niger documents.

The letter "raises new questions about why the administration withheld the evidence from the IAEA for over six crucial weeks in December and January and - even then - failed to share the conclusions of U.S. intelligence officials that the evidence was bogus."

Several investigations are under way in Congress, but Democrats said much more was needed.

Rep. Janice Schakowsky of Illinois called for an independent, non-congressional inquiry.

"Did the Bush administration knowingly deceive us and manufacture intelligence in order to build public support for the invasion of Iraq?" she asked. "Did Iraq really pose an imminent threat to our nation?"

Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination, including Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and John Kerry of Massachusetts and Reps. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, called for further investigation.

"George Bush's credibility is increasingly in doubt," Graham said.

Said Kerry: "The Bush administration doesn't get honesty points for belatedly admitting what had been apparent to the world for some time - that emphatic statements made on Iraq were inaccurate."