Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Today's Bushism:
[1]Today's Bushism at Slate is:
"The United States and the U.S. stand together in support of the
Iraqi people and the new Iraqi government, which will soon come
into action." -- Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 22, 2005
Except that [2]the transcript (which Slate of course doesn't link to)
seems to reveal the broader context to be:
PRESIDENT JUNCKER: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. . . .
As regards Iraq, we applauded the courage of the Iraqi people and
the results of recent Iraqi elections, as far as the out-turn was
concerned. We are pursuing our common engagement in Iraq. The
United States and the U.S. [sic] stand together in support of the
Iraqi people and the new Iraqi government, which will soon come
into action. To that end, should the new Iraqi government request
it, the United States and European Union are prepared to co-host an
international conference to provide a forum to encourage and
coordinate international support for Iraq. . . .
I leave this to the President of the U.S.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Mr. Prime Minister, thanks. . . .
Yup, it seems like today's Bushism wasn't said by President Bush, but
rather by European Council President Jean-Claude Juncker (who is also
the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, hence the honorific that President
Bush gave him) -- or, I suspect, by the translator. I checked all the
transcripts I could find on LEXIS, and none attributed this to Bush;
all attributed it to Juncker, except one that attributed to an
otherwise unidentified "Scheffer," likely an error.
Am I missing something here? Or is this yet another flub, much like
[3]the one on Feb. 10? That one was at least based on an erroneous
transcript (though the error could have been caught had someone did a
quick search to see what other transcripts said, or listened to the
audio file). This one seems to be based on an erroneous reading of the
transcript.
References
1. http://slate.com/id/2114070/
2. http://tokyo.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20050223-12.html
3. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_02_06-2005_02_12.shtml#1108075083
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