Sunday, May 17, 2015

ABC News: Jeb Bush Comes Full Circle On Iraq Question: 'I Would Not Have Gone Into Iraq'

By Chris Good, May 14, 2015, ABC News

In the space of just four days, likely Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has come full circle on whether he would have made the decision invade Iraq in 2003 as his brother, then President George W. Bush, did.

"If we're all supposed to answer hypotheticals,” Bush said at a town hall meeting in Tempe, Arizona, today. “I would not, have engaged, I would not have gone into Iraq.

Bush said he was "reluctant to say what I'm about to say now" because as governor of Florida he contacted families to offer condolences when their children died in Iraq. "It's very hard for me to say that their lives were lost in vain, and they weren't."

It all started with a question posed by Fox News' Megyn Kelly in an interview that aired on Monday: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion" of Iraq in 2003?

"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,” Bush said.

But over the last few days he has sought to refine that answer.

In an interview on The Sean Hannity radio show on Tuesday he acknowledged: "I interpreted the question wrong, I guess” and added “I don't know what that decision would have been. That's a hypothetical.”


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