REUTERS
How Was That a Gaffe? [Stephen Spruiell]
I had a feeling someone would try to score points with this:
Mandela still alive after embarrassing Bush remark
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.
I'm not a huge fan of Bush's habitual mangling of the English language, but this is one instance in which the guy's been charged unfairly. Honestly, is it Bush's fault if some people don't get the concept of a metaphor?
09/21 04:10 PM
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