Was Maureen Dowd's Comment Correct, Spin, Innocent Error, or Flat-Out Lie?

[december]

The Sacramento Bee ran a correction of an editorial that was presumably based on Dowd’s column. (It was written a day after Dowd’s column appeared.)

The May 15 editorial “Crypto-government” quoted President Bush out of context regarding the threat posed by al-Qaida terrorists…

The use of the partial quotation created the false impression that the president was dismissing the threat posed by al-Qaida as a whole rather than its members who had been killed or apprehended.

It’s just pathetic that the New York Times and Maureen Dowd don’t have the cojones to simply print a brief correction.