>And it's not always in that form, sometimes it's closer to Clinton's "mistakes were made". That phrase far predates Clinton, probably Nixon or earlier was the

>And it's not always in that form, sometimes it's closer to Clinton's "mistakes were made". That phrase far predates Clinton, probably Nixon or earlier was the first I heard it attributed. There is also a great book by that title (Mistakes were made, but not by me) that talks about the psychological drive to quell dissonance and how it can lead to absurd scenarios.