Bush, Blair: Sorry, did we say "Iraq"? We meant "Syria".

From the BBC:

Former US President George W Bush has spoken out to justify his 2003 invasion of Iraq, admitting that his poor grasp of written Arabic in intelligence reports led him to confuse the two neighbouring Arab states.

"We knew there were chemical weapons round there somewhere," said Mr Bush, "Our satellites can't actually recognise state borders, so give or take a few hundred miles, there were chemical weapons exactly where we thought they were."

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair interrupted his hectic speech-giving and fund-raising schedule to point out that his claim that the UK was "45 minutes away from mass destruction" was in fact understating the case.

"Syria is closer to Europe than Iraq, so strictly speaking we were only about 41 minutes away from mass destruction. People say I sent in our troops to invade the wrong country? As a Prime Minister with our country's best interests at heart, I feel I did what was right."

Mr Blair also hastened to underline the Iraq invasion's humanitarian credentials: "Assad has shown the terrible death and suffering which WMDs can cause when used on innocent civilians. If our liberation of Iraq helped prevent a single such incident, then it will have been worthwhile."