Yikes! George W. Bush blows it big time with very unfortunate Iraq gaffe

Former President George W. Bush has been responsible for some pretty embarrassing gaffes in his time. But his latest flub was a real doozy.

During a speech in Dallas on Wednesday, in which he held forth on domestic and international threats to “our democracy,” Bush committed a verbal blunder that has drawn ridicule from just about everyone, in a rare spirit of nationwide bipartisanship.

“In contrast, Russian elections are rigged,” Bush said in his speech. “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.”

Ouch.

Now just about everything in that paragraph is unintentionally hilarious. Rigged elections, as well as the imprisonment and obstruction of political opponents are crimes that are hardly unique to Russia these days, given recent political developments in the United States. But, of course, the most glaring faux pas was the Freudian slip at the end: “…the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” the former president said.

Was he referring to Vladimir Putin, or to himself? Bush immediately corrects himself, and then laughs.

“Iraq, too,” he mutters, to scattered nervous laughter, and shrugs. “Anyway…uh…seventy-five,” he adds by way of explanation, referring to his age.

The Iraq war was, of course, launched by the former president, and many have indeed criticized it as an “unjustified and brutal invasion.” The invasion of the country, and the deposition of its authoritarian leader Saddam Hussein, was launched after a bipartisan authorization by Congress in October of 2002. Lasting intermittently until 2011, the war resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 US troops, to say nothing of many more casualties, and estimates of around 200,000 Iraqi civilians killed during the war and its ensuing chaos.

Critics have accused Bush of instigating the war on a pretext—Hussein’s stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction, which were never found—and have condemned the invasion as unjustified both from the standpoint of its stated cause and from its end result. Bush’s muttered “Iraq, too” remark might seem to indicate that he agrees with them.

It didn’t take long for the Twitterati to have some fun at the former president’s expense.

“Oof,” former Rep. Justin Amash tweeted. “If you were George W. Bush, you think you’d just steer clear of giving any speech about one man launching a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion.”

Others were a little less generous.

It’s going to be a long time, if ever, before Bush lives this one down. Meanwhile, elsewhere in his speech, Bush took the time to praise Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he called a “cool little guy,” and waxed eloquent about Ukraine’s electoral system, and how it reflects on the health of its democracy.

“The way countries conduct elections is indicative of how their leaders treat their own people, and how nations behave toward other nations,” he said. “And nowhere is this on display more clearly than Ukraine.”

Bush, in lockstep with the Swamp, has repeatedly “rejected” widespread evidence of irregularities and voter fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election.

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33 thoughts on “Yikes! George W. Bush blows it big time with very unfortunate Iraq gaffe

  1. 75 LOL, should stay home and collect those Bush dynasty checks, and keep his crazy Joe bantering to himself. We have had enough of the bush’s.

  2. One of the absolute worst actions ever taken by a president. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. He never convinced me then, and it’s become painfully clear today just how terrible for America that invasion was. bush and the neocons invaded to make him and his friends rich. he is a disgraceful draft dodging POS who sent the best America has into a war that didn’t need to happen.

  3. Before Trump, I defended Bush because he was acting on “information from American and international intelligence”.
    What happened to America as punishment for electing Donald Trump to be President, proved that those “intelligence” agencies make the decisions and the President is supposed to do what he is ordered and refusal to comply will not be tolerated.

    1. Bingo ! !
      Any agency,be it fbi,cia military. Anyone up the ranks are CORRUPT !!
      Hands in the cookie jar .and wars make these corrupt politicians RICH .
      Not one war on President Trumps watch .
      So bad for the stolen election to get a demented fjbiden and his puppeteer.
      You know who .

  4. Guilt pangs finally catchin’ up with ya there, george? I’ve been saying all along the only reason you ordered the invasion of Iraq is because hussein put out a hit on yer daddy. You lied, you made it personal and good men died and were disfigured so you could avenge a personal grudge.

  5. Yoh Semite Sam dumbass Bush seems to be on the same road lane as dementia
    Fjbiden .
    Always laughed at his gaffs and there were many .
    Fjbiden is the king of gaffs .
    I remember when he called Canada to get on board to invade Iraq for
    Weapons of mass destruction.
    Prime Minister Chrétien,at that time declined .
    Bush came back with the assinin ,laughable statement ,
    “ your either with us or against us “,so I guess we were labeled against Bush .
    Needless to say Canada stayed home and Bush went to war looking for these
    Weapons of mass destruction.
    There were none to be found and never existed.
    Another lame war USA got into and there’s many .
    Just like dementia fjbiden in Afghanistan, no plan, no expertise..
    Just dumb.

  6. Elections here are not as different here than Bush describes Russia as some think. The left is just more suttle about it. Hopefully we are getting that changed.

  7. Bush’s comments on elections have become almost the same in our country. Far more than most people realize. I think there is an article by Donnie Duetsch today about election intimidation. More shootings and riots by the left’s boots on the ground soldier’s, Antifa and BLM to come before the midterms.

  8. Just proves that we have absolutely no business being involved with Ukraine. It’s not our fight and serves no US interests. Absolutely shameful that US taxpayers are on the hook for BILLIONS. Russia is not going away. The clear winner in all of this is China. They happily buy Russian oil and sell their low priced garbage to US consumers looking for even cheaper good do to the loss of their purchasing power due to the self-inflected wounds of double digit inflation and outlandish fuel costs.

  9. GWB was always a terrible speaker-that is how he got the “dumb” label he had to wear. That being said I never liked him because of his RINO beliefs. He was basically a Democrat with an (R) next to his name. Going into Iraq and then putting boots on the ground in Afghanistan -was one of the worst foreign policy mistakes in our history, and thousands of brave warriors were sacrificed, and tens of thousands wounded all for nothing. We should have just used our dominant air power, missiles and drones to destroy any threat in either country. Large troop movements, equipment can no longer hide with eyes in the sky.

  10. Sure seems very minor to me — compared to the White House squatter!! I guess people are trying to distract from his multiple gaffes every time he opens his mouth? I’ll take President Bush any day of the week over someone who is obviously suffering from fullblown dementia, and whose goal is to turn America into a socialist/communist country!! Any day! And it sure didn’t cost $100.00 to fill the gas tank of your car when he was in the White House!!!

  11. To be clear, I don’t like Bush or anyone in his family. Every time we had a Bush as president, I had family members in Iraq getting their azzez shot off for no good reason.
    One of Florida’s worst governors ever was a Bush. I have no use for ANY of them.
    That being said, everybody has a slip of wording on occasion and he was coherent enough to have caught it right away, so give him a break. FJB

    1. I liked both President Bushes when they were in office. When George W made it clear that he didn’t support President Trump, though, I was thoroughly disgusted.

  12. That’s is pretty ironic and embarrassing for George W, isn’t it! Well…the difference though, is a big one…he’s no longer the President of the United States. The one we have now makes George W’s look like a walk in the park every single day of the week.

  13. Monkey Boy can’t blame his age for saying stoopid things. It’s always been part of his shtick. Kind of like Obongo using the word “I ” every second sentence.

  14. Zelinsky has jailed and banned the opposition parties in the Ukraine! He literally is what “our” media accuses Russia of being.

  15. I never realized how dumb and liberal W. was until we had a real President in the WH for four years, named Donald J. Trump.

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