It's apparently a slow news day because the wire services are trying to manufacture a controversy:

In a speech defending his administration's Iraq policy, Bush said former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's brutality had made it impossible for a unifying leader to emerge and stop the sectarian violence that has engulfed the Middle Eastern nation.

"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday.

So it's not the most artful way to get the point across, but Warner Houston at Newsbusters makes it clear that Bush was using Mandela as a stand in for a generic peacemaker, and not saying anything specific about Mandela himself or his current body temperature.

Could it be any more obvious that Bush is saying that there aren't any Iraqis filling the same sort of role in Iraq that Nelson Mandela filled in South Africa? Could it be any more clear that Bush was saying that Saddam "killed all the Mandelas" of Iraq?

Yep, a bit of a manufactured controversy, which Bush could have avoided by saying "peacemaker" instead of Mandela, if there ever were any in Iraq, which is a highly debateable subject.

Captains Quarters goes a bit further and finds the first quote by ambassador Crocker that Bush was probably referencing here.

Bush rejected suggestions to help oust Maliki, reasoning that he was the product of a democratic system that the United States helped establish in Iraq, aides said. Moreover, as officials contemplated alternatives, they concluded there was no better potential leader. "There's no Nelson Mandela in Iraq," Crocker, the ambassador, told colleagues back in Washington. "Saddam killed them all."

Interestingly enough, Neither Reuters, nor AP nor half the lefties in the world accused crocker of making a gaffe. Somebody should be embarrassed here, and it isn't mr. Bush.