You forgot Poland
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"You forgot Poland" is a catch phrase based on a statement by United States President George W. Bush concerning Poland's involvement in the Iraq War during the first presidential election debate on September 30, 2004, during the 2004 U.S. presidential race.
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[edit] Presidential debates
During the debate John Kerry accused Bush of failing to gain widespread international support for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, saying "... when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better." Bush, who had used Poland earlier in the debate as an example of the international presence in Iraq, replied by saying "Well, actually, he forgot Poland."[1] Paraphrased as "You forgot Poland", the term became a popular catch phrase among Bush detractors, seen as a humorously petty rebuttal of Kerry's original point (i.e. that Bush claimed that over 40 nations were "supporting" the invasion, when the number of nations that had contributed over 1,000 troops was far lower; therefore even if Bush's statement was entirely accurate, four nations with significant troop numbers on the ground as opposed to three was still nowhere near "a grand coalition" of forty nations).
[edit] Polish involvement in the Iraq War
Poland's level of involvement in the Iraq offensive at the time of Bush's statement later became a subject of debate. However, official American and Polish sources show that 184 soldiers from the elite Polish commando units GROM and Formosa participated in the March 2003 invasion, with combat being confirmed by the Polish government on March 24. By August, 2003, Poland had 2,500 soldiers in southern Iraq. This contribution placed them behind only the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, and Australia in terms of the number of troops contributed.
[edit] European software patents
In late 2004, the European Union's patent law proposal, which had been criticized on the grounds that it essentially legalized software patents in the European Union, was delayed by objections from Poland. In an intentional reference to the Bush quotation, Internet journalists used the catch phrase to describe this incident.[2][3]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Transcript of the first Bush-Kerry presidential debate. Commission on Presidential Debates (2004-09-30). Retrieved on 2006-12-07.
- ^ Discussion of blocking the patent by Poland on slashdot forum. Slashdot (2004-11-17).
- ^ European software patents not pending. ZDnet (2004-09-30).
