In its edition of Friday, December 6, the Washington Post wrote of Treasury Secretary O’Neill’s resignation:
O’Neill’s terse, three-sentence resignation letter to Bush stated, “It has been a privilege to serve the nation during these challenging times. I thank you for that opportunity.”
Perhaps noticing that it provided only two sentences (but perhaps not), the edition of Saturday, December 7, reported:
O’Neill angrily wrote a three-sentence resignation letter to Bush saying, “I hereby resign my position as secretary of the treasury. It has been a privilege to serve the nation during these challenging times. I thank you for that opportunity.”
Following is the actual, complete text of O’Neill’s resignation letter, which also appeared in the WPost’s Friday edition. I have numbered the sentences in case any WPost editors happen to see this:
1. “I hereby resign my position as secretary of the Treasury.
2. It has been a privilege to serve the nation during these challenging times. 3. I thank you for that opportunity.
4. I wish you every success as you provide leadership and inspiration for America and for the world.”
I suppose three out of four isn’t bad. After all, the Post doesn’t claim to be the newspaper of record.
