It’s not exactly a correction or an apology, but President Bush has kind of expressed regret for using terms like "Wanted, Dead or Alive" and "Bring ‘em on" in the early days of the war on terror. In a Thursday interview with reporters from 14 newspapers, Bush said this of the "Wanted" remark:
"I
don’t know if you’d call it a regret, but it certainly is a lesson that
a president must be mindful of, that the words that you sometimes say.
… I speak plainly sometimes, but you’ve got to be mindful of the
consequences of the words. So put that down. I don’t know if you’d call
that a confession, a regret, something."
As for "Bring ‘em on":
"Sometimes, words have consequences you don’t intend them to mean…Bring
‘em on’ is the classic example, when I was really trying to rally the
troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood, you know,
what a great job they were doing. And those words had an unintended
consequence. It kind of, some interpreted it to be defiance in the face
of danger. That certainly wasn’t the case."
