George W. Bush: Hooked on phonics

Speechwriters for George W. Bush must have finally gotten the memo that Bush can't pronounce certain words. A draft of his UN speech that was accidentally placed on the UN's Web site contained phonetic pronunciation keys for several foreign names, including Sarkozy "[sar-KOzee]," Mugabe "[moo-GAHbee]," Kyrgyzstan "[KEYRgeez-stan]," and Mauritania "[moor-EH-tain-ee-a]."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino's explanation: "There was an error made in trying to make sure that interpreters had what they needed. I don't know how the draft of the speech - it was not final - was posted, but it was, and it was taken down."

Perino also said that it's "not unusual" to include phonetic spellings for various countries in the speech, but when asked if Bush has a hard time pronouncing some of those country names, Perino said, "I think that's an offensive question."

Why? Because the answer is "Yes"?

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/09/bush-speech-has.html