The White House was left scrambling to explain after a marked-up draft of Bush's speech popped up briefly on the U.N. Web site as he delivered his remarks, giving a rare glimpse of the special guidance he gets for major addresses.
It included phonetic spellings for French President Nicolas Sarkozy (sar-KO-zee), a friend, and Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe (moo-GAH-bee), a target of U.S. human rights criticism.
Pronunciations were also provided for Kyrgyzstan (KEYR-geez-stan), Mauritania (moor-EH-tain-ee-a) and the Zimbabwe capital Harare (hah-RAR-ray).
Now I know that we cannot expect the president to be as quick as a news anchor but the only one of those that I will accept is even remotely tricky is Kyrgyzstan. This guy is the leader of the most powerful country in the frigging world and he needs help to pronounce Harare.
I live about midway between Harvard and Yale and suddenly I don't really have a warm fuzzy feeling about sending a child to either of them.
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