The MoDo - Reloaded
Columnists at the New New York Times get mulligans - who knew?
Back on May 14, Maureen Dowd used her Creative Excerpter to mis-represent comments President Bush made about al-Qaeda, as detailed by Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity.
A mere two weeks later, Ms. Dowd offers what I suppose passes for a correction, presenting the complete quote in her May 28 column. What she does not do is mention her previous abuse of this quote. I expect Ms. Dowd's regular readers could be excused a puzzled sense of deja vu, but I don't imagine her regular readers are looking for a lot of coherence or consistency in her column anyway.
However, let's pitch in the full quote, just for the record:
Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore. (Applause.) And we'll stay on the hunt. To make sure America is a secure country, the al Qaeda terrorists have got to understand it doesn't matter how long it's going to take, they will be brought to justice. (Applause.)
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