Speaker 1: I have for you today an ultra viral video of former President George W Bush with what
is an incredible Freudian slip, wherein he says that the Iraq invasion that he led in 2003 was
brutal and unjustified. And of course, that's correct, but that's not what he meant. George
W This is really unbelievable. George W Bush was speaking at the George W Bush Institute this week
about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And during that speech, he meant to call the Russian invasion
of Ukraine unjustified and brutal, which is true. But he instead said Iraq. And he just sort of like
laughs it off and says, hey, I'm 75 years old now and we're going to look at the video. It's
disturbing to see one of the biggest tragedies, optional tragedies of the century so far
reduced to a whoopsie. I misspoke. So take a look at this video. 17 million views in under 24 hours
so far. Likely we'll get 30, 40 million views checked. George W Bush speaking about meaning
to speak about Russia but slipping up. Speaker 2: In contrast,
Russian elections are rigged. Political opponents
are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process.
The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man
to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, over Ukraine. Iraq, anyway. 75.
Speaker 1: So he seems to say Iraq, too, there. And it's not clear if he's joking,
but it's clear he didn't mean to say that that was a slip up. He accidentally called his invasion
of Iraq in 2003 brutal and unjustified, and he laughs it off. Now, there are people in
the audience who are young enough that you may not remember the entire lead up to the Iraq war,
or maybe even know that much about it. This was an absolute tragedy based on false information
linking Iraq to the 911 attacks and claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which
we can't ever say with certitude that they didn't have, but that were never found.
We can say 4400 U.S. armed forces were killed in that optional, misguided war.
32,000 American troops were wounded in action in that war, 318 coalition forces were killed, 16,000
Iraqi military and police were killed. Somewhere around 26, 27,000 Iraqi insurgents were killed,
136 journalists and media worker. Another 50 media workers were killed on duty covering that war. And
population based studies of Iraq suggest that the civilian casualties were somewhere between. And
I know this is a big range. Civilian casualties in Iraq during the Iraq war were between 150,000
and a million excess deaths. Think about those numbers. Think about the incredible loss of life
based on what were the things that were being said at the time. At the time, there were three main
lies that were being told, which many Americans fell for, particularly Fox News viewers. We
covered we covered this when the show started. The war was still going on. It wasn't the beginning of
it, but it was still going on. The lie was told that Saddam had something to do with 911. He did.
The lie was told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. If they had them,
they were never found. And the lie was told that the world community was generally supportive of
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The world community was not supportive of that. And on that lie, and on a
false intelligence case made by Colin Powell, made by Condoleeza Rice and the Bush administration
at large, somewhere between, you know, all told, 200,001.1, 1.2 million people died. Untold amounts
of money was spent. And for those in our audience too young to remember the lead up, it was really
it was the first time I saw firsthand and experienced in a way that I could sort of remember
and understand it. You know, during the first Gulf War, I was a little kid in the early nineties. And
I remember seeing, you know, on TV, my parents were watching footage of what was going on,
but I didn't really understand it. In 23, I saw the drumbeat. We've got to go. We've we're
going to have to go. Saddam's a bad guy. Yellowcake uranium. Colin Powell making the case
using bad information. And then we're going to be greeted as liberators. And Dick Cheney saying
they're going to throw roses at us, I think he said. And of course, it didn't happen and it
was an absolute and total disaster. So George W Bush, you know, you can analyze this a bunch of
different ways. Oh, he's 75. He's just he's kind of losing it. He doesn't know what he's saying
or it was a very meaningful Freudian slip where he maybe now recognizes the misguided nature
of that invasion. My sense is I mean, listen, I don't like rewriting history
and making George Bush out to be anything better than what he was, which was a disaster
on basically every front. But in some way, with the benefit of hindsight, I think if you got
Bush in a room where there was no media and he was just totally honest with you, my sense is
he probably would express regrets about Iraq. I'm not saying that it would be a complete 180,
but I think to some degree he realizes that it was not worth it and that it was wrong. I don't know
that he would ever say it. I'm speculating, and I would like to believe that that Freudian slip
was in some way representative of what he actually believes. Let me know what you think. Incredible
video. Monday, Memorial Day. We are doing a big membership blowout. It'll be a one day
discount. We want to bring in as many new people into the ranks of membership as we can as we
lead up to the midterm elections of 2022, significant midterm elections. If you would like
to get the coupon code to sign up on Memorial Day, just get on my newsletter at David Pakman dot com.