On Sunday Barack Hussein Obama, speaking at Iowa State University, made accused the troops of wastingtheir lives:

    We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.


The Chicago Sun-Times reports Obama quickly fired up the nuance machine:

    Obama, in an interview with the Des Moines Register right afterward, told the paper, ''I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term,'' he said. ''Their sacrifices are never wasted. . . . What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission...We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans that have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.


But instead of those last 27 words (which don't entirely make sense--e.g., "the same attention" as what?), what came out of his mouth was "wasted."

The Sun-Times notes that Obama is sorry you took what he said the wrong way, which is to say, the way he actually said it:

    By Monday, reporters covering Obama making his first visit as a presidential candidate in New Hampshire, asked Obama, campaigning in a Nashua home, if military families deserved an apology.

    "Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.''


Not a "botched joke," but close.