Today the New York Times has published a correction to this article about John McCain by Elisabeth Bumiller and Larry Rohter. John Hinderaker first pointed the error out and called on the Times to correct it in this post. But I don’t think this is what John had in mind:
Because of an editing error, an article last Thursday about foreign policy advisers to Senator John McCain referred incorrectly to an error he made at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 8. He briefly referred to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as a Shiite group, rather than a Sunni group; he did not repeat an error during the hearing that he had made on a trip to the Middle East last month when he said several times that he was concerned that Iran, a Shiite nation, was training Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni group.
The Times omits a quote of McCain’s alleged error, so I’m not sure which passage it is now referring to. Could it be this?
We must press ahead against Al Qaida, the radical Shiite militias — Shia militias and the Iranian-backed special groups.
Or this?
MCCAIN: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view Al Qaida in Iraq as a major threat?
***
MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites overall…
PETRAEUS: No.
MCCAIN: … or Sunnis or anybody else.
I don’t think McCain made the error that the Times now attributes to him, which John addressed here when it was raised by Howard Dean.
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