Posted on 05/14/2015 1:36:11 PM PDT by VinL
After several days of shifting responses panned by Republicans and Democrats alike, Jeb Bush has arrived at his final judgment on the 2003 invasion of Iraq: No, he would not have authorized the war had he known the Iraqis did not have weapons of mass destruction.
"Knowing what we now know, I would not have engaged," Bush said during a visit to Arizona on Thursday. "I would not have gone into Iraq."
The former Florida governor, a Republican who's weighing a 2016 presidential bid, suggested the thousands of Americans who lost their lives in the war did not die in vain. "Their sacrifice was worth honoring, not depreciating," he said.
But his comments nonetheless mark a repudiation of the war launched by his brother, former President George W. Bush, who sold the invasion to the American public based on intelligence that later turned out to be false. Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, as the former president claimed, nor was it affiliated with the September 11 terror attacks.
Jeb Bush, hoping to follow his brother's path to the White House, has struggled in recent days to articulate a clear answer to the question of whether he'd have invaded Iraq, given the benefit of hindsight.
In an interview that aired Monday, Fox News' Megyn Kelly asked him, "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?"
Bush, though, answered the wrong question: "I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."
In a later interview with conservative radio host Sean Hannity, Bush said he'd "interpreted" Kelly's question incorrectly - but he declined to say whether he would have authorized the war, knowing what he knows now, calling it a "hypothetical"
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Has anyone noticed how Jeb has the same mannerisms as his brother GW? It is uncanny. Are mannerisms genetic?
So. I’m sitting here just guessing, but does he mean that he would have just sent some planes and bring them all here with all the rest of the doggone illegals and made them citizens, too?
I think he’s throwing out positions on the Iraq war,trying to find one that gives him a bump in the polls.
George Romney: “I was brainwashed.”
Back to sneaking in to Barney Frank’s private parties for you, Jeb!
Post of the day award.
If the goal of three-dimensional chess was to make a move that was stupid in all three dimensions at once, Jeb Bush would be Bobby Fischer.
Going in to Iraq was not the problem.
Going OUT of Iraq created the problem.
In retrospect, it now appears that the thug Saddam Hussein was the only guy in the region who could keep these loons` throats under his boot. Jeb should at least acknowledge that, not whether we went in on flawed evidence.
Jeb has not been practice debating at all. Or if he has, it’s been with the wrong line of questioning. I get the feeling W. or Elder Bush would tell him things, but Jeb thinks he knows better that they do.
What kind of shovel do you want Jeb? We sell spades, snow shovels, all manner of ditch diggers now in stock.
“I was all for going into Iraq before I was against it”.
What an idiotic answer to an idiotic question.
Once cannot use hindsight (especially the distorted lens type preferred by the liberal media) to discount contemporary knowledge. One can only use hindsight to improve understanding of conflicting contemporary data.
The question needs to be sent back to the asker with extreme prejudice - something like “Knowing how the current administration was going to completely abandon the fledgling Iraqi democratic state? You mean THAT hindsight?”
“I would not have gone into Iraq”
Add liar to his list. Until now, he has least been honest with his poor opinions.
Going in to Iraq was not the problem.
Yes it was.
Correct, although it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
It’s what the democrats do, they did it in Vietnam
and they are doing it in Afghanistan.
America is the only conquered nation they haven’t
pulled out of early.
Why aren’t they asking if he would have bombed Japan?
Or maybe they should ask him his favorite Cuban food.
Journalists are idiots.
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