Kinsley's Law of Gaffes: Special 9/11 edition

Kinsley's Law of Gaffes: A gaffe occurs not when a politician is caught telling a lie, but when he's caught telling the truth.

"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror," said Bush to Katie Couric during his CBS Evening News interview last week.

It was one of those rare moments of accidental candor that make campaign advisors smack their foreheads. Even Bush seemed to realize that some backpedaling might be in order. The moment comes at the 00:50 mark in this clip.

As you'll see, there's a short, awkward pause--as that Kinsleyan gaff hung out there like a fart at a tea party--and then an abrupt camera cut to this:

As I told you, Osama bin Laden believes it. But the American people – have gotta understand that a defeat in Iraq – in other words, if this government there fails - the terrorists will be emboldened, the radicals will topple moderate governments.

I'm worried, Katie, strongly worried about a world if we – if – if we lose, you know, our confidence and don't help – defeat this ideology, I'm worried that 50 years from now they'll look back and say, "How come – Bush and everybody else didn't see the fact that these – this group of people would use oil to affect our economy?

I wonder about that camera cut. Bush's comments after the edit--after that first gaffe-ish sentence--seem like a non-sequitur. They not only don't seem to answer Couric's question, they don't seem to follow the first part of his remark. "Osama believes it"--believes what? What's missing?

Of course, with Bush, you never can be sure if you've got a non-sequitur or just his trickle-of-consciousness brain doing the best it can. And yet, another possibility is that there's some footage on the CBS editing room floor--something that came after Bush complaining about the difficult job of convincing Americans of something that isn't true and before his rambling comments after the cut.

The CBS transcript suggests that Bush's remarks were a continuous flow, but that doesn't quite fit with the video. Wonder what the rest of his inadvertantly-true answer to Katie might have been?