Correction to This Article

A May 3 Page One article about negotiations between President Bush and congressional Democrats over a war spending bill said the Democrats offered the first major concession by dropping their demand that the bill it include a deadline to bring troops home from Iraq. While Democrats are no longer pushing a firm date for troop withdrawals, party leaders did not specifically make that concession during a Wednesday meeting with Bush at the White House.

In other words, the premise and headline of WaPo's front-page story were essentially false. While it does seem likely that the withdrawal timetables will be gone from whatever final compromise emerges, this concession to the White House simply never happened.

Nonetheless, the story got tons of play. As this blogger rightly notes, WaPo's story had a major impact on the debate. It caused a great deal of consternation on the left, forcing Nancy Pelosi to go before the Dem caucus to tell her charges that the story was false. It was also picked up by some reporters at the big news orgs, such as Time.com's Karen Tumulty. And it caused a fair amount of whooping and high-fives on the right. "Dems retreat on surrender initiative!" shrieked hapless winger Jules Crittendon. Except, of course, that they didn't.