Advantage, Tiny Revolution-O-Sphere!

A week ago I pointed out this passage from a New York Times story, in which they took an excursion into an alternate universe:

The possibility that Saddam Hussein might develop "weapons of mass destruction" and pass them to terrorists was the prime reason Mr. Bush gave in 2003 for ordering the invasion of Iraq.

Then the admirable humans of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting picked up on it. And enough people pestered the Times that FAIR got results:

After FAIR issued an action alert (9/8/06) pointing out the New York Times' revision of recent Iraq War history, the Times published a correction (9/12/06) on its website. The correction read:

"An article that appeared on NYTimes.com for part of the day on Sept. 5 incorrectly described President Bush's statements about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Mr. Bush said it was Iraq's possession of those weapons that was the main justification for the invasion, not the possibility that the weapons could be developed."

Except, as FAIR points out, they got even this wrong:

FAIR is pleased that the Times corrected the record. The correction's characterization of the article as appearing "for part of the day on Sept. 5" is inaccurate; the article remained on the Times site in its uncorrected version even after the correction was published. A follow-up inquiry from FAIR alerted the Times to the error, and the article has now been removed from the website. The correction, too, has been removed, under the Times' curious policy of replacing its online corrections each day but providing no archive of the previous day's corrections--let alone those of the previous week or month.

Confused? So am I. What I believe happened was this:

1. The NY Times published this story online on September 5th.

2. For whatever reason, they published a different version, with other reporters, in the paper version on September 6th.

3. The paper version then appeared online.

4. FAIR pointed out the problems with the original version. The Times published the correction on their correction page, but didn't realize the original online-only version was still on the site until FAIR pointed it out.

5. They took the original version down, so now there's nothing there. It doesn't even appear in Nexis.

6. Being more than a day old, the correction no longer appears on their correction page, and old corrections aren't archived. So there's no evidence anywhere, on the NY Times site or in Nexis, that they made this mistake in the first place.

Still, I find it gratifying that our network of Lilliputians was able to make this happen. I also find it pathetic that we're so weak that I find this gratifying. But until recently we couldn't even do THIS. When you're wandering in the desert dying of thirst, even a glass of spit is welcome.