Bush Mistakenly Says Mandela is Dead

[Doug]

Yes, he's still stupid.

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.

...In a speech defending his administration's Iraq policy, Bush said former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's brutality had made it impossible for a unifying leader to emerge and stop the sectarian violence that has engulfed the Middle Eastern nation.

"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday.

...References to his death -- Mandela is now 89 and increasingly frail -- are seen as insensitive in South Africa.

Read the rest here.

[LaWood]

I figured Bush thought Saddam had bombed the nation of Mandela about he same time he gassed the Kurds.

No telling what's going on in the mind of a drunk or coming out of his mouth.
.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Just academic, of course, but it would be interesting to know who or what W thought Mandela was when he said that.