During his eight years as president (2001-2009), George W. Bush made some memorable slips of the tongue. His mistakes during his public speeches are so well known that there is even an English concept to define them: buchisms.
Well, the latest bushism to add to his long record of blunders has to do with the war in Ukraine. At an event in Dallas on Wednesday, the 43rd American president was criticizing the political system of Russia led by Vladimir Putin when he said: "The result is the absence of checks and balances in Russia, and one man's decision to launch an invasion totally unjustified and brutal attack on Iraq.
After that, he reacted quickly to correct himself: "I mean, Ukraine." And with a shrug, she added quietly, "Iraq too." A comment that made the audience burst into laughter. "Seventy-five," added the former president, attributing the error to his age. More laughs.
Bush authorized the invasion of the Gulf country in 2003, with the support of Spain and the United Kingdom (the so-called Azores Trio), in order to find and destroy alleged weapons of mass destruction that were never found. Claims that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was harboring fighters from al Qaeda, which carried out the 9/11 attacks, also turned out to be unfounded.
The conflict, which lasted until 2011 and has left a country shattered, unstable and plunged into civil war, killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced many more. There is no official death toll, but the Iraq Body Count portal, one of the best sources for tracking the number of civilians killed since the invasion began, estimates that 185,154 civilians died from direct war-related violence caused by United States in the eight years of occupation. Coalition forces lost 4,825 soldiers.
4
