Well, it only took him about 12 years to figure this out.
Former Florida governor and current GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush (R) is backtracking from his major blunder earlier this week, when he told Megyn Kelly on Fox News that even knowing everything we know now, he too would have invaded Iraq in 2003 just like his brother, then-president George W. Bush.
Bush initially responded to the controversy by saying that he hadn’t understood the question. But now with all the public blowback against him — including from fellow Republican presidential contenders — Bush appears to finally be seeing the light.
“If we’re all supposed to answer hypothetical questions, ‘knowing what we know now, what would you have done?’ I would’ve not engaged — I would not have gone into Iraq,” Bush said Thursday, at an event in Tempe, Arizona.
He then continued, however, to praise the Iraq War itself and all the people who served in it — though very interestingly, with an apparent error in his grammatical syntax.
That’s not to say that the world is safer [sic] because Saddam Hussein is gone — it is significantly safer. That’s not to say that there was [sic] a courageous effort to bring about a surge that created stability in Iraq — all of that is true. And that’s not to say that the men and women that have served in uniform, and many others that went to Iraq to serve, did so [sic] — they did so, certainly honorably.
But we’ve answered the question now. So now, going forward, what’s the role of America going forward? Are we going to pull back now and be defeatists and pessimistic? Or are we going to engage in a way that creates a more peaceful and secure world? That is what 2016’s about — not about 2000, not about 1992, not about 1980 — but about the future. And I hope that you want leaders that are going to be forthright in their views, that will express those views with compassion and conviction, and do so, so there’s a clear understanding for America’s role in the world.
Okay, good thing that’s now all clearly understood.
Video via CNN.
