Accidental Blogger

You didn’t hear about Nelson Mandela’s death, did you?  Neither did I or the rest of the world. But George W. Bush, the president of the most powerful nation in the world thinks Mandela is dead. Not just that – but that Saddam Hussein may have killed him. How’s that for breaking news?  I watched Bush’s press conference and when I heard this claim, I nearly dropped the plate I was washing in the kitchen.  The statement is so incoherent that I can’t quite figure out if it was a Bushism, a subtle metaphor or another depressing example of presidential ignorance. Can you tell?   The White House has not issued a clarification.

Here is part of Bush’s exchange with NBC’s David Gregory:

Q I’ll ask you about Iraq. Efforts to curtail the deployment of troops is an ongoing debate right now. One of the things you spoke about in your address last week had to do with impatience with the Iraqi government. And you spoke about that, but not in much detail. How is that dynamic changing, your level of frustration with the lack of political progress? And how long can Americans reasonably expect you to wait before you take some kind of action that really forces the Iraqi government’s hand to reach the goals of reconciliation that you set for them?

THE PRESIDENT: In my speech, I made it clear that there has to be a change in security for there to be reconciliation. And I also said that progress will yield fewer troops. In other words, return on success, is what I said.

There are two types of reconciliation, David. One is that reconciliation, that very visible reconciliation that happens through the passage of law. In other words, it’s reconciliation that shows the Iraqi people that people from different backgrounds can get along and, at the same time, that government can function. Clearly there needs to be work there. In other words, there needs to be the passage of law. For example, we strongly believe that an oil revenue-sharing law will send a message to Sunni, Shia and Kurd alike that there is an effort at the national level to achieve reconciliation. …..

…. Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where’s Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there’s a psychological recovery that is taking place. And it’s hard work for them. And I understand it’s hard work for them. Having said that, I’m not going the give them a pass when it comes to the central government’s reconciliation efforts.

And just minutes ago I heard the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad make this outrageous claim.

Asked about widely documented government abuse of women and homosexuals in his country, Ahmadinejad said, "We don’t have homosexuals" in Iran, and that women did have freedoms.