You What??

In the spirit of this, we have this from the Age.

Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite a gaffe by US President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in a speech yesterday.

"It's out there," said Achmat Dangor of the Nelson Mandela Foundation of Mr Bush's comment, which received worldwide media coverage.

"All we can do is reassure people, especially South Africans, that President Mandela is alive," he said.

In a speech defending his administration's Iraq policy, Mr Bush said former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's brutality had made it impossible to unite the country.

"I heard somebody say, 'Where's Mandela?'," he said.

"Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

The bizarre gaffe was made in a press conference in Washington yesterday.

So that was the real reason for going to war in Iraq. He must be getting foreign policy advice from Miss South Carolina.

cj in comments clears it up for us.

It's clear from the transcript that the literal meaning of the question "Where's Mandela?" GWB was asked is "Where are the Iraqi leaders who will play the same role that Mandela played in the rebuilding of South Africa?" GWB's response was a pithy metaphor summarizing the situation there.

Apparently, GWB's critics are either (a) so dishonest as to give a false spin on the statement, (b) too lazy to check out the context before reporting it, or (c) too stupid to understand the analogy.

I plead guilty to (c)

Larvatus Prodeo has more, along with a very amusing comment thread.

Carry on everyone.

Mission Accomplished?

Dubya' s recent attempts to link the Iraq Quagmire to the humiliation in Vietnam is interesting in the attempt to show parallels between two failed military and political campaigns. Leaving aside that both wars were sold under false pretences and lies, these are the last gasps of a bankrupt and desperate leader.

The war in Vietnam was a civil war that was turned into an American war; the war in Iraq is an American war that has become a civil war. To that extent Iraq is the true quagmire that Vietnam did not have to be. A precipitate withdrawal would unleash Iraq's civil war into ever larger killing fields of vital significance not only to the United States, but to the rest of the region and beyond.

Wow and I can vividly remember all those technical guys who were going to come in and fix Iraq within a few months after the glorious liberation march. Get the power plants running, fix the water, build some schools....

As the author concludes

The future holds no "date certain" for withdrawal, although, and without a doubt, the earlier the better. But the past offers even less of a date certain for redemption, and going back to Vietnam as an alibi for explaining a delayed withdrawal from Iraq only serves to obfuscate further a war that the administration failed to explain when it was launched, and now fails to understand after it has failed.

So basically they are completely stuffed in every department. More money will be poured into a bottomless pit of death, despair and disaster. Surely this is what people envisage hell to be.

Perhaps Bush will have to do some political rearranging to move things along a little. I mean why would you take a holiday when you have guests fixing things up for you.

Viral Art from the very talented Beau Bo D'Or

Lest we Forget

Mike Whitney has a resonant suggestion that the likely future Iraq Memorial should be on the White House Lawn.

Let’s tear down the rot-iron gates surrounding the White House. Let’s remove the cement abutments and the cyclone fencing. Let’s put up a 10 ft high crescent of black marble on the White House lawn skirting both sides of the presidential walkway. That way, we can be sure that any future president will be forced to pass by the stone monuments that bear the names of the men and women who lost their lives in Bush’s Folly.

Not going to happen, but a public recognition of all those anonomous senseless deaths in Iraq is warranted.