and THIS is who you have faith in !?....get a checkup
Bush confuses Austria with Australia as bin Laden joker crashes party
by RICHARD SHEARS -
He is famous for his gaffes, but even by George Bush's standards it was a bad day.
Addressing an audience in Sydney, the U.S. president referred to Australian troops as Austrians and became confused about which event he is there to attend.
He also got tongue-tied over the name of an Asian terrorist group and came close to coming a cropper when he walked the wrong way off a platform.
But with his history of muddled speeches and mangled words, everyone - including heads of state from the Pacific region - just accepted his mistakes and grinned.
Mr Bush, in Australia for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit (APEC), began his "slips of the tongue" day at a business forum at the Sydney Opera House when he thanked Australian prime minister John Howard for his hospitality.
"Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," he said.
As those who know that Australia has never been a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries began to titter, the President quickly corrected himself.
"APEC summit," he said, before making a joke of his gaffe by adding: "He invited me to the OPEC summit next year."
A little later he thanked Mr Howard's soldiers for serving in Iraq, referring to them as Austrian troops.
Horrified White House officials quickly set about correcting official tapes of the speech so the word came out as "Australian", but journalists' tape recorders had trapped the error.
Then, referring to a terrorist group in the region called Jemmiah Islamia, Mr Bush stumbled over the pronounciation of the first word.
Later, he showed a flash of anger when a veteran White House correspondent asked him if there had been any new message in his speech.
As he left the platform, Mr Bush came close to stumbling off when he strode away from the lectern in the wrong direction.
He was redirected to centre stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theatre.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Sydney with some dropping their trousers and "mooning" to make their anger at Mr Bush's presence known, but he did not see them because the Opera House was secured inside a three-mile ring of steel. |
