On June 11, Tom Baldwin and Gerard Baker of The Times of London reported on an exclusive interview ("President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war') with President George Bush at a U.S.-EU summit meeting in Slovenia, in which Bush expressed regret about what The Times called his "gun-slinging rhetoric" in the build-up to the war in Iraq. His use of phrases such as "bring them on" or "dead or alive," Bush said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace". His remarks were heavily covered in media world wide and in the United States.
The New York Times published a somewhat self-satisfied media analysis, saying that Bush had noted his regrets about his tough tone before and the New York Times had known about his concerns for several years. Although the New York Times made a snide reference to "the British paper's triumphalism about its scoop," no such "triumphalism" was detectable in the text of The Times's report on the interview.
