New in PJ Media:
It was just a slip of the tongue. Or was it? Like so many such slips, it was revealing. Speaking at an event at his presidential center at Southern Methodist University on Wednesday, former President George W. Bush praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, likened him to Winston Churchill, and then said, “In contrast, Russian elections are rigged. Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process. The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine, heh heh.” Then he added quietly, “Iraq, too. Anyway, uh …” To laughter from the audience, Bush then said, “75,” a reference to his age. (A side note: Old Joe Biden is 79.)
The most extraordinary aspect of this was not Bush’s initial slip, but the fact that he added “Iraq, too” after correcting himself. So does Bush, after all these years, finally concede that the invasion of Iraq was “unjustified,” not to mention “brutal”? In his January 29, 2002 State of the Union address, Bush called North Korea, Iran, and Iraq an “axis of evil,” and declared, “By seeking weapons of mass destruction [WMD], these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.” He added, “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade.”
In his memoir, Decision Points, Bush recalled, “The conclusion that Saddam had WMD was nearly a universal consensus. My predecessor believed it. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill believed it. Intelligence agencies in Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, China, and Egypt believed it.” Chemical warheads were ultimately found in Iraq, but only after the Bush administration had suffered immense political damage from claims that they were not found, and that Bush and his associates had lied about their presence. What’s more, others contended that what was found in Iraq were chemical weapons that had been manufactured before 1991, and were not evidence of an ongoing program that Saddam was conducting.
The Bush administration was likewise hit for claiming that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had worked together. Dick Cheney said as late as 2014 that Saddam “had a ten-year relationship with Al Qaeda.” The 9/11 Commission, however, stated that “we have seen no evidence” that the contacts between the two “ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship.”
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CogitoErgoSum says
I think Bush, Jr. had a vendetta against Saddam Hussein because Saddam had authorized an assassination attempt on Bush, Sr. I remember seeing a video clip of Bush, Jr. being asked by a reporter about the reason Saddam needed to go and the answer was, “He tried to assassinate my dad.” It was personal for him. He was going to get Saddam no matter what.
Infidel says
Yeah. It was making it personal that helped dissipate what was initially a pretty united country after 9/11. Had he taken out the Saudis and Pakistanis and not tried to remake them in our image, he’d have done far better, and we wouldn’t have had hordes of muslims spilling into Europe
Of course, his most unforgivable crime was giving islam a clean chit
Black Sabbath says
Supposed “he tried to assassinate my dad” was the sole reason, then how did Bushes get money to buy 300,000 acres ranch in Paraguay in 2005? Who gave them that kind of money?
OLD GUY says
As I recall Bush was in business with the Saudi Royal family and may still be. BIG MONEY FLOW.
Wellington says
Arguably, the ultimate slip of the tongue in our age.
Again reality, including very recent history, reveals itself as most definitely stranger than fiction, a personal theme of mine over the course of some 33 years of teaching history.
No fiction is more astounding (and disturbing) than the actual historical record. I stand by this and Bush 43 just helped, in microcosm, to prove my point here.
Black Sabbath says
Tongue slipping is a tradition in Bush family. I remember his father laughing about Lee Harvey Oswald shooting JFK, and that the Warren Commission Report was the best thing ever, since the sliced bread.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4892422/user-clip-george-hw-bush-laughs-oswald-jfk-fords-funeral-defends-warren-commission
Michael says
And this from fellow Milky Bar Kid.
In his interview with Justin Welby of 6 March 22, Tony Blair admitted that he may have got it wrong about Afghanistan and Iraq but ” I had to do what I thought was right.
In those really big decisions you don’t know what all the different component elements are, and you have got to follow in the end, your own instincts.”
Beyond belief that such berks were handed the keys to the arsenal.
Kesselman says
A Freudian slip of the tongue is always interesting. The Bush attack on Iraq wasn’t more justified than Putin’s on Ukraine. So making Putin different doesn’t make sense.—What is astonishing is how little amount of intel the human brain can absorb. And today all of humankind is totally dependent on a few hotheads reading the information at hand upside down.
gravenimage says
Iraq had a chance to have a civilized democracy. Of course as an Islamic country they rejected that chance.