The Workday Liberal

The A.P. report on the Bush-Blair get together has the following item of interest:

In unusually introspective comments, Bush said he regrets his cowboy rhetoric the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks such as his "wanted dead or alive" description of Osama bin Laden and his taunting "bring 'em on" challenge to Iraqi insurgents.

"In certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted."

Actually Mr. President, the problem with those statements was not that they were "misinterpreted" or any other such poofuffery you might wish to throw at us as you consider your blunders in hindsight. In fact the truth of the matter is that the bring 'em on blunder was directly addressed by Bush to the infant insurgency in Iraq:

"There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on."

Now Bush is trying to say he didn't mean what he actually said and that it was all a misinterpretation. Being incommunicado in Arabic myself, I would have to wonder if the interpretation of the words "bring it on" from English to Arabic would be roughly along the lines of, "let us eat pie together", and the President was actually offering an olive branch. I rather suspect that is not the case.

How do you misinterpret "wanted dead or alive"? The President who is so proud of saying what he means and meaning what he says now wants us to believe it is our fault for getting him all wrong with two of the most famous statements of his Presidency.

Using this new Bush comprehension of the English language, we are now able to understand that "mission accomplished" actually means that there are thousands of casualties down the road. "Heckuvajob" means pack your bags... Actually now that I consider this novel approach by the President, he very well might have a point! Deficit means surplus, legal means illegal, black means white... yeah! I get it now.