Another bad speech for Bush. Kinda makes you wonder if he's drinking again. At the Sydeny Opera House in Australia on Friday he delivered a speech to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) at the invitation of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The house was half empty, so the start of the speech was delayed 10 minutes in order to give the ushers time to bring the peons down from the balcony to fill the empty seats next to the dignitaries in the orchestra section where the cameras were pointed.
The Bush gaffs started with his third sentence. "Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," he said. WRONG! APEC, not OPEC, the oil cartel. He then tried to correct it by saying forcefully, "APEC summit," and added that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year. WRONG! Neither Australia nor the U.S. are members of OPEC, and may not attend.
Next he thanked Howard for sending his country's soldiers to serve in Iraq, calling them "Austrian troops." WRONG! Australian troops. (The official transcript released by the White House corrected it to "Australian troops", but on the tape he can clearly be heard calling them Austrians.
His speech was not interrupted by applause even once. Finally when it was done, he headed out - the WRONG way - on a path that would have sent him off a steep drop from the stage to the theater floor. Unfortunately Howard and others caught him in time and sent him back to center stage where there were steps leading down to the theater. Too bad. We all could use a good laugh these days.
