Remarkably, instead of slinking away from the subject of his brother's disastrous Iraq war after bungling it so badly in the first months of his campaign, Jeb! Bush has spent the week talking about it on purpose. What was apparently supposed to be an offensive to turn the tables on Hillary Clinton and President Obama for "losing" the war his brother George W. was "winning" has instead generated headlines like
"Jeb Bush offered inaccurate version of Iraq war history." But that's not stopping him. In a campaign stop on Thursday, Jeb!
doubled down on defending his brother's war and his brother's illegal tactics.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said on Thursday during a campaign stop in Iowa that "taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal," according to multiple reports. […]
The Beast reported that Bush went on to say he didn't want to hypothesize about what would have happened if his brother, former President George W. Bush, had not ordered the invasion of Iraq, which led to the toppling of Hussein.
In the real world, toppling Hussein opened Iraq and ultimately the region up to the chaos that brought al-Qaeda into Iraq and led to the formation of ISIS. Of course, in
Jeb!'s retelling of the story, ISIS is Obama's and Clinton's fault. As if Jeb! hasn't had a hard enough time selling that line to a skeptical press, he decided to dig himself an even bigger hole by
saying he wouldn't rule out torture.
"I don't want to make a definitive, blanket kind of statement," Bush told an audience of Iowa Republicans, when asked whether he would keep in place or repeal President Barack Obama's executive order banning so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA. […]
Jeb Bush said he believed that the techniques were effective in producing intelligence, but that "now we're in a different environment."
He suggested there may be occasions when brutal interrogations were called for to keep the country safe.
"That's why I'm not saying in every condition, under every possible scenario," Bush said.
Later Thursday in Iowa, Bush said there is a difference between enhanced interrogation techniques and torture, but declined to be specific. "I don't know. I'm just saying if I'm going to be president of the United States, you take this threat seriously."
Neither of the Bush boys is the smart one. Jeb! has now proven that he will be as willing a tool of the neocon crowd as his brother was. They made George W., and now
they're making Jeb!.