At Beltway black tie dinner in 2004 George W. Bush joked about never finding the WMDs that had been his main excuse for bombing Iraq. Beltway crowd laughed as Bush showed slides of himself looking under furniture for WMDs-BBC, 3/26/2004

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3/26/2004, “Bush’s Iraq WMDs joke backfires,” BBC

“At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show poking fun at himself and other members of his administration.

One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere.”

After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: “No, no weapons over there,” he said.

And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: “Maybe under here?”

The audience at Wednesday’s 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association obviously thought the quips hilarious – there were laughs all round – but the next morning, in the cold light of day, things looked far less amusing.

The joke about the fruitless search for Iraqi WMDs so far, Washington’s prime justification for the US-led invasion, has been branded as tasteless and ill-judged.

Mr Bush’s election challenger Senator John Kerry described the president’s attitude as “stunningly cavalier”.

“If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he’s even more out of touch than we thought,” he said in a written statement.

“Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke.”

Mr Kerry’s statement also included a comment from Iraq war veteran war veteran Brad Owens, who said: “War is the single most serious event that a president or government can carry its people into.

“This cheapens the sacrifice that American soldiers and their families are dealing with every single day.”

More than 500 US soldiers have died in the war and thousands more have been injured.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked what he thought of this incident at a press conference on Friday, but he dodged the issue, saying that he couldn’t comment as he hadn’t been at the event.” image above from BBC
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Added:

3/26/2004, “Family of Slain Soldier Calls Bush WMD Jokes “Disgraceful”,“ Democracy Now

“At a black-tie dinner for Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association on Wednesday, Bush poked fun at himself and his administration for among other things not finding weapons in Iraq.

At one point Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office. He said: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.”
 
After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. Bush said “Nope. No weapons over there.” Then another picture of Bush searching in his office. He said “Maybe under here.”…

But the Daily News is reporting that the families of soldiers killed in Iraq are not laughing.

George Medina who lost his son in Iraq said, “This is disgraceful. He doesn’t think of all the families that are suffering. 

It’s unbelievable, how this guy runs the country.”

Medina’s son, Special Irving Medina died at the age of 22 in Baghdad on November 14.”….
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