From Holden:

It all boils down to “I don’t always talk good.”

“Sometimes, words have consequences you don’t intend them to mean,” Bush said Thursday. “‘Bring ’em on’ is the classic example, when I was really trying to rally the troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood, you know, what a great job they were doing. And those words had an unintended consequence. It kind of, some interpreted it to be defiance in the face of danger. That certainly wasn’t the case.”

Shit, he’s still clueless. No one interpreted “Bring it on” as “defiance in the face of danger”. Quite the contrary, people (and particularly the families of our troops in Iraq) interpreted “Bring it on” as an invitation for Iraqi insurgents to attack U.S. soldiers in Iraq that was extended by a man who was a safe distance away from any harm at all, a man who when offered the opportunity to face danger on behalf of his country declined to do so.

There’s more:

In the week after the September 11 attacks, Bush was asked if he wanted bin Laden, the terrorist leader blamed for the attacks, dead.

“I want justice,” Bush said. “And there’s an old poster out West, that I recall, that said, ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.”‘

Recalling that remark, Bush told the reporters: “I can remember getting back to the White House, and Laura said, ‘Why did you do that for?’ I said, ‘Well, it was just an expression that came out. I didn’t rehearse it.’

“Why did you do that for?” Jeebus, Laura speaks as poorly as her husband.

The “Dead or Alive” remark was stupid, for sure, but the problem most people have with it is that it was an empty promise. Instead of using all of our resources to go after Osama, Bush attacked Iraq. And the rest is history.

And what about his crusade against terrorism blunder? Certainly that remark outweighs “Dead or Alive”.

In the final analysis, Bush characteristically still can’t bring himself to call these remarks mistakes.

“I don’t know if you’d call it a regret, but it certainly is a lesson that a president must be mindful of, that the words that you sometimes say. … I speak plainly sometimes, but you’ve got to be mindful of the consequences of the words. So put that down. I don’t know if you’d call that a confession, a regret, something.”