Do You See an Answer here? Because I don't...

QUESTIONER: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right.

That's really what you're -- when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, "Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?" And the answer is, "Absolutely not." It was the right decision.

The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

We knew he hated us. We knew he'd been -- invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.

On the tax cut, it's a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV.

(LAUGHTER)

But history will look back, and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to my administration, because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility. (emphasis added by me, the blogger)


Unbelievable. And you wonder why the international community considers the United States to be arrogant. "I've probably made mistakes but if I did they were small ones, and even then, I don't want to tell you what they are."

Also worth noting is Prof. Yen's assessment of Bush's "mixed messages" argument. "So what I'm hearing you say is, even if we're screwing up now, the best course of action would be to keep screwing up because fixing it would send mixed messages to our troops."

Another point: props to Kerry for his reference to the "Orwellian" names the Bush administration puts on its initiatives, particularly the "Clean Skies Act," and "Clean Water Act," which make the skies and water less clean.

Everyone who is reading this should visit factcheck.org. It's an independent website with the sole purpose of pointing out factual inaccuracies by the two presidential candidates. The great thing about Kerry is that I know he would admit to his mistakes. Bush probably thinks that "facts" are part of a liberal conspiracy, just like math and the word "nuclear." (thank god his top priority is to reduce nucular proliferation. apparently you don't need to appear competent to win the presidential election. i may have a chance, afterall...)