George bush jokes about wmd

Mr Bush made the joke at a black-tie event for radio and television journalists in Washington on Wednesday night. He narrated a slide show, described as the White House election year album, making hay of the administration's reputation for secrecy and strained relations with European allies. But it was the joke about the war in Iraq that drew attacks. A slide showed Mr Bush in the Oval office, leaning to look under a piece of furniture. Another slide showed him peering into another part of the office, "Nope, no weapons over there," he said, laughing. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who will fight Mr Bush for the White House said the joke displayed a "stunningly cavalier" attitude.

The White House and Republicans contend the president was just poking fun at himself. House Speaker John Boehner became animated Tuesday over the proposed Keystone Pipeline, castigating the Obama administration for not having approved the project yet. Bush provided amusing descriptions of photographs Wednesday night during the annual dinner of the Radio and Television News Correspondents Association. Some showed the president in awkward poses as he looked behind furniture in the Oval Office. For years the dinner has featured political and topical humor, most of it playful if barbed at times.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction WMD go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

During the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner this week, Bush presented a slide show of quirky photographs from inside the White House. In one, the president is looking under furniture in the Oval Office. Democrats have seized on the matter, calling it astonishingly insensitive when Americans have died for their country in Iraq while the search for WMD has turned up nothing. The administration had cited the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons program as one of the primary reasons for the need for war.