That pesky 'not'

Bad day for "not" on the Fractious Near East desk at the Times:

An article on Thursday about Syrian rebels’ efforts to neutralize the country’s air force rendered incorrectly a comment by Jamal Marouf, a rebel commander. He said that if the rebels are supplied with antitank weapons and shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, they “will destroy this regime in less than 30 days.” He did not say “in not less than 30 days.”

Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about comments by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggesting a link between the Qaeda franchise in North Africa and the recent attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, paraphrased incorrectly from comments by Benghazi residents about the brigade that carried out the attack. The residents said the brigade could easily have managed the assault on its own, not that it could not have managed it.

I get the "because of an editing error," but there are times when the mere juxtaposition of it all makes you wonder whether we should get a little more information about the genesis of some of the other errors we see.