Will the Edwards campaign RETRACT their lying misquote of Obama?

The full interview is here.

http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080115/VIDEO/80115026&oaso=news.rgj.com/breakingnews


UPDATE: There's some dispute over whether Obama actually said this quote, and I have to say I'm skeptical. It's clumsy and weird and doesn't sound like Obama at all. I'm watching the full interview now, I only listened to some of it last night. It's Edwards spokesperson Mark Kornblau who apparently put out that Obama said this, and CBS News's Aaron Lewis who wrote it into the article.

UPDATE AGAIN: Ok, done. Obama didn't say it. Kornblau and Lewis should retract what they put out. Incidentally, there's other stuff in the interview that falls along the same neoliberal interpretation of history. He talks about his opposition to the Iraq war as not rooted 'in some 1970s love-in' mentality but as part of a pragmatic sensibility.

Admiral Oliver commanded a nuclear submarine and two submarine groups in the Navy. He served in Baghdad as the Director of Management and Budget for the Coalition Forces.

Stuart Bowen is the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. His task is to follow the paper trail - and after more than 100 investigations his work paints a grim picture of waste and mismanagement.

Mr Bowen said billions of dollars were shrink-wrapped in plastic and flown out of the US to Baghdad.

"It was $2bn a flight, and I know of at least six flights," he said.

Mr Bowen said some of the cash went to pay the salaries of thousands of "ghost employees", or Iraqi civil servants who did not actually exist.

-snip

As the planes landed with their hefty bundles of greenbacks, they became the responsibility of a man named David Oliver.

Mr Oliver was in Baghdad in the summer of 2003 as the CPA's first head of finance. He helped establish the financial framework, but resisted pressure to bring in outside auditors.

-snip

As head of finance at the time surely he must know what happened to the $8.8bn?

"I have no idea, I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't - nor do I actually think it is important," he said.

Yes, but the fact is that billions of dollars have disappeared without trace.

"Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money disappeared, yes I understand, I'm saying what difference does it make?"