Thanks to a reader for this one. The Associated Press reports today: “President Bush suggested on Thursday that he wanted to clarify two things he had said recently — that just a ‘handful’ of terrorists were at work in Iraq and that a bleak intelligence assessment of Iraq’s future involved ‘guessing’ by U.S. intelligence officials.”
In the Los Angeles Times, the AP story ran under the headline, “Bush Clarifies Iraq Intelligence Remark.”
On his earlier use of the word “handful,” according to the story, Bush said Thursday “he had been primarily referring to ‘the people that are affecting the nightly news’ with beheadings, bombings and other acts of violence. ‘My point is that a few people, relative to the whole, are trying to stop the march of freedom.'”
The AP continued, “‘Look, I’m fully aware we’re fighting former Baathists and Zarqawi network people. But by far the vast majority of people, among 25 million people, want to live in freedom,’ Bush said.”
As for describing the CIA’s work as “guessing,” Bush now says “I used an unfortunate word, ‘guess.’ I should have used ‘estimate.'”
And he elaborated: “This is a report that talks about possibilities about what can happen in Iraq, not probabilities. And this report was written in July. And now we are here in September. And, as I said, ‘estimate’ would have been a better word.”
Where we come from, statements of that sort are called corrections, or rowbacks, or even (as someone once put it) flip-flops.
We understand that campaigns describe corrections as “clarifications,” because it sounds less damaging. But that doesn’t mean the press has to play along.
–Zachary Roth
Zachary Roth is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He also has written for The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Talking Points Memo, among other outlets.