Four corners

I’ve not run across it on any of the pages I visit, but it’s only a matter of time. And I did have someone e-mail it to me, so I might as well comment:

George W. Bush did not say:

We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation.

The quote is from Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, and sometimes this is mentioned (Woodward’s name giving it a certain cachet).

But Woodward never attributes this quote to Bush. Instead, he records it as being said by an unindentified CIA or Special Forces trooper at a 9/11 memorial they’ve built in the Afghan mountains during the first mission into Afghanistan.

Call it a pre-emptive correction.