Likely GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush is doubling down on supporting his elder brother's rationale for entering the 2003 Iraq War, even as some conservatives are miffed by his most recent statements, which could haunt him politically,
USA Today reports.
Bush, in an interview, was resolute in saying that his brother, former President George W. Bush, did the right thing — at the time — by entering Iraq, adding the president was acting on the best intelligence information he had available, USA Today said.
"I would have and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody," Jeb Bush said in an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly. "And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."
But Kelly quickly pushed Bush on his answer, noting that the so-called weapons of mass destruction, which is why Bush said war was justified, were never found, USA Today said.
"Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?" Kelly asked Bush.
He responded: "In retrospect, the intelligence that everybody saw — that the world saw, not just the United States — was faulty. And in retrospect, once we invaded and took out Saddam Hussein, we didn’t focus on security first, and the Iraqis in this incredibly insecure environment turned on the United States military because there was no security for themselves and their families."
Bush added that his brother, more than a decade later, shared his views.
"By the way, guess who thinks that those mistakes took place as well? George W. Bush."
Quickly, however, some Bush's most noted detractors were saying that was the wrong way to go.
Pundit Byron York,
in a Washington Examiner editorial published Monday, called Bush's remarks disastrous and "depressing" if indeed he is the future GOP nominee. He predicted they would come back to haunt him as the election cycle continues.
"If Jeb Bush sticks to his position — that he would still authorize war knowing what we know today — it will represent a step backward for the Republican Party," York wrote.
"Jeb's statement is likely to resonate until he either changes his position or loses the race for the Republican nomination. Should he become the nominee, the issue will dog him into the general election campaign."
Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham said the former Florida governor should have responded "no," because it was later determined that Bush's justification for entering Iraq was wrong, as no weapons of mass destruction were found.
"You can’t think going into Iraq now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to do. That’s like you have no ability to learn from past mistakes at all," Ingraham said of Bush.
NBC News wondered if Bush had "trapped" himself with such a defense of his brother's Iraq policy.
Said NBC of Bush's quandary: "The Iraq question was always going to be problematic for Jeb Bush. Either he throws his brother under the bus, saying George W. Bush made an error in judgment in starting the war. Or he defends the war and finds himself on the wrong side of public opinion (with two-thirds of the country saying the war wasn't worth it, per the October 2014 NBC/WSJ poll)."
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