Guess I was wrong. I figured when Jeb Bush said,
"What you need to know is that who I listen to when I need advice on the Middle East is George W. Bush," that was as disqualifying a statement as any candidate for public office ever uttered. Forget president: were Bush a candidate for county board, or city council, or soil district commissioner said something like that, you'd assume his judgment was far too suspect to allow him to be further considered. But nope. Turns out Bush could come up with something even worse to say.
Oddly enough, Fox News gave him his, um, opportunity. Bush said, "I would have," which is harmful given the question he was answering. "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?" Naturally, we on the Democratic side will be bringing that up more than once. Republicans will have to choose between acknowledging the reality of arguably the single biggest blunder in US foreign policy history, or playing to a base that insists in telling itself that the war went just fine until Obama screwed it up by pulling out (in compliance with the status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, mostly negotiated under Bush's brother, but never mind the little point that the Iraqi government wanted us out).
If Bush does go for the "I thought the question was given what we knew then" spin, that's not necessarily better given how we learned too late just how much knowledge the Bush administration withheld from Congress and the press. That begs the question, just who is the "we" in "what we knew"? What the Bush administration really knew, or the parts it told us about?
UPDATE: Apparently, Bush is going to go for claiming he misunderstood the question. Though lest he be accused of admitting a mistake, "Yeah, I don't know what that decision would've been". And wasn't the surge great? Chris Christie gave a sense of where BUsh's intraparty opponents might go. Having the sense to say he wouldn't invade knowing what we know now, Christie felt the need to bow to stupidity:
Christie said that he believed former President George W. Bush did make "the best decision he could at the time" given the information coming from the U.S. intelligence community and the situation on the ground in Iraq.
Sure, if you're willing to forget Bush ignored all the information that didn't fit the pre-determined conclusion, which unfortunately was most of the intelligence. But let's blame the intelligence agencies for that I guess.
And let's pretend Democrats would have done the same thing: "And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got." Hillary owned up to the mistake, albeit not until well into the 2008 campaign and it cost her the presidency IMHO, and does anyone take seriously the notion she would have invaded Iraq had she been president after 911? Or any Democrat? "Almost everybody" doesn't include most congressional Democrats, who figured it out even with the limited and often wrong information Bush provided. So no, Bush and Bush and bushies and other Republicans, you own the invasion and occupation of Iraq with all the consequences.
#ThisGuyWantsToBePresident
cross-posted at MN Progressive Project
1:13 PM PT: SECOND UPDATE: Bush came up with a bit of spin I hadn't guessed at:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) on Wednesday said that he has refused to answer whether he would order the Iraq War knowing what he knows now, because it would disrespect the troops, according to CNN.
I'm starting to think I actually want the Republicans to pick this guy.