The war of words over an ad placed by anti-war activists MoveOn in The New York Times has taken a new tack, with the organization saying it will pay for what it said was a mistake by the newspaper.

A full-page ad by the group was printed in the Sept. 10 editions, the day Gen. David Petraeus appeared before Congress to warn against a rapid withdrawal from Iraq.

The ad's headline -- "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" -- questioned his honesty and said he was "constantly at war with the facts" in giving positive assessments of the war.

The ad enraged conservatives and war supporters and has become a staple of cable TV news debate. President George W. Bush called the ad "disgusting." Republicans in the Senate passing a resolution condemning the ad, even as they turned back a resolution that condemned all political attack ads, including those that questioned the patriotism of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, both Vietnam veterans.

Then on Sunday, the newspaper's public editor, Clark Hoyt, made new waves when he wrote in his column that MoveOn should not have received a break in the price for its ad, based on the newspaper's own policies.

The group should have paid $142,083, not the $64,575 that it was charged, he said. The newspaper said an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

Hoyt also wrote that the ad's content seemed to challenged an internal advertising manual that says the paper does not accept opinion ads "that are attacks of a personal nature."

Hoyt wrote that, "Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was 'rough,' he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print."

MoveOn said it didn't know it got the break, and said it panned to pay the difference.

"Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by most organization, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad. We will therefore wire the $77,083 difference to the Times tomorrow," MoveOn's Eli Pariser said in a statement on Sunday.

A posting on the Times' political blog, The Caucus, said Giuliani negotiated his ad rate break with the newspaper. A phone call to Giuliani's office regarding the MoveOn payment elicited this response:

"While we appreciate that The New York Times and Moveon.org have both publicly acknowledged their sweetheart deal, no amount of money will make right this misguided ploy attacking a general in a time of war."