gawd, this man is an embarassment

Bush inartfully suggests Saddam killed Mandela.

In a press conference this morning, President Bush tried to assert that Saddam’s brutal rule over Iraq wiped the country clean of potential democratic reformers — individuals who may have possessed leadership skills like former South African President Nelson Mandela. In doing so, Bush inartfully suggested Saddam killed Mandela:

I thought an interesting comment was made — somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, “Now, where’s Mandela?” Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.

For the record, Nelson Mandela is still alive while Saddam Hussein is dead.

Nelson Mandela was a strong opponent of the war in Iraq. Prior to the war, he condemned Bush as “a president who can’t think properly and wants to plunge the world into holocaust.” “Why does the United States behave so arrogantly?” he asked, adding, “They just want the oil. We must expose this as much as possible.”

(Think Progress)