Let’s go to the transcript:

JOHN KERRY: Only an uneducated idiot would interpret my remarks as referring to the troops.

THE TROOPS: That’s how we took it.

JOHN KERRY: As I was saying . . .

(Previous fictional dialogue here.)

The New York Times has corrected its misstatement about John Kerry’s “stuck in Iraq” remarks. The correction reads:

A Political Memo article yesterday about the fallout for Senator John Kerry over what he called a “botched joke” referred incompletely to the differences between prepared remarks and what he actually said about the Iraq war to students at Pasadena City College in California on Monday. Mr. Kerry not only dropped the word “us,” but he also rephrased his opening sentence extensively and omitted a reference to President Bush. Mr. Kerry’s aides said that the prepared text read: “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.” What he said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

As of the time of this post, the correction has not been appended to the original piece.

UPDATE 6:20 a.m.: The correction has been appended.