Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush said he regrets the display of the “Mission Accomplished” sign as backdrop for a speech he gave about a month after the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“To some, it said, well, `Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over,’ when I didn’t think that,” he said in a CNN interview today. “It conveyed the wrong message.”

The sign was hung on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, when Bush landed on the carrier wearing a flight suit to declare that major combat operations in Iraq were over. That speech has since served as a rallying point for critics of Bush’s policies in Iraq.

Bush also cited other regrets in the CNN interview, which was conducted aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid in New York after a Veterans Day ceremony.

“I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said,” Bush said. He cited comments he made after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he said of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden: “I want justice. There’s an old poster out West that said, ‘Wanted, dead or alive.”’

He also said he regretted telling Iraqi insurgents in 2003: “There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring ‘em on.”

`Be Careful’

In the interview yesterday, he said, “My wife reminded me that, `hey, as president of the United States, be careful what you say.”’

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Marvelous, simply marvelous!  Bush II has gotten few things right in his tenure as POTUS, but the few things he did get right he’s now apologizing for!

I’m sick of ‘spin’, I’m sick of ‘politically correct speech’, and I’m sick of people who said or did the ‘right thing’ and then backpedal when they’re called on it.  Give me someone who says or does what they believe to be right and sticks by it over these simpering @ssholes who say or do something and then backpedal away from it!