Mistakes were made.

 

We deeply regret the error. We've known that it exists, even though we've never saw it, hiding in the structure of the atom. We posed it badly, stupidly, ad-libbing about some saying the al Qaeda candidate. No one, in fact, used that construction. Your government failed you. And we failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. We ask for your understanding and your forgiveness. We never meant for this to happen. We ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. In no way was it meant to demean him, and we're sorry if he was offended. We want to clarify the true meaning of our address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect. We put oversight steps into place that will prevent these kind of mistakes from happening again. A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that we embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and we apologize to anyone who was offended by our statement. Is it right to call for assassination? No, and we apologize for that statement. We've launched an internal investigation into what happened, and we are taking steps to ensure that this type of thing never happens again. We wanted to correct the record. We're glad we had this chance to do it.