“I would have [authorized the invasion], and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got,” Bush told Megyn Kelly of Fox News, likely referencing the fact that Clinton, a senator from NY at the time, voted in favor of the invasion.
These statements from the younger Bush brother came less than a week after he stated in a closed door meeting that his older is one of his main advisers on the Middle East, despite admitting that the "intelligence that everybody saw, that the world saw, was faulty," to Kelly regarding the Iraq invasion.
"What you need to know is that who I listen to when I need advice on the Middle East is George W. Bush," one of the meeting’s attendees quoted him as saying to CNN.
"Gov. Bush deeply respects his brother's service to this country and in response to a question about James Baker and Israel, he reiterated that he looks to his brother whose stalwart support for our ally is in line with his commitment to standing with Israel in the face of great threats to their security and our own," a spokesman for the younger Bush brother told CNN.
Jeb Bush had previously tried to distance himself from the mistakes of the Bush II era, so the sudden embrace has left many scratching their heads.
“By the way, guess who thinks that those mistakes took place as well? George W. Bush. Yes, I mean, so just for the news flash to the world, if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those," Jeb Bush said.
Both democrats and conservatives alike have torn into the younger Bush over the comments.
“Apparently hindsight isn’t 20/20 for Jeb Bush. Even knowing how badly we were misled, he would still have done it all again," DNC spokesperson Kristin Sosanie responded in a statement to reporters. "Even knowing what we all know now to be false intelligence, Jeb would make the same decision," she added. "Jeb Bush’s disastrous go-it-alone approach is wrong for our country.”
Meanwhile conservative radio host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham also voiced expressed criticism, laughing at the absurdity of his statements.
"You can't still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to do," Ingraham said on her radio show. "If you do, there has to be something wrong with you,"
The full interview is scheduled to air Monday evening.
