Here's another one of those cases where the headline may not quite match the content of the story…
Howard Dean Says Iraqis Worse Off Now
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press WriterMANCHESTER, N.H. – Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean said Sunday that the standard of living for Iraqis is a "whole lot worse" since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in last year's American-led invasion.
"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone," said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq. "But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."
If you punctuate the quote that way, it's at least a little arguable that the last part refers to all Iraqis. But I suspect Dean meant that the Iraqis whose standard of living is a whole lot worse now are the dead ones. The "whole lot worse" part is the key that there's a little sarcasm intended and the structure of the sentence suggests that what he's saying is that you have to weigh the sentiments of some live Iraqis against the fate of the dead ones who cannot express an opinion. Whoever transcribed Dean's remarks could have done what my teachers always told me to do — never start a sentence with a conjunction — and made the last two sentences into one. If they'd done that, it would have been clear that's what he meant.
I may have mentioned this before but on the campaign trail during the '64 election, Barry Goldwater gave a speech where he accidentally got his words confused and wound up coming out in favor of the spread of Communism. It was just bad phrasing, a flaw that every public speaker displays on some occasion. Back then, everyone — reporters and his opponents — just gave him a pass on it. They knew what he meant to say and the press reported what he meant to say, not what he actually said. Today, it's almost like they look at every utterance and wonder if there's some way to strip-quote or punctuate it to make it a hotter news story. Unless of course, it's George W. Bush and they've decided that awkward sentence structure is part of his charm.