On Monday, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly asked Jeb Bush a simple question. Knowing what we know today, would he have still invaded Iraq as President? Bush said he would.
That’s when the trouble started. An overwhelming majority of voters believe that the Iraq War was a mistake.
Bush told Sean Hannity on Tuesday that he misunderstood the question, and he was actually saying that he would have invaded Iraq based on the intelligence then. (Bush’s characterization of the intelligence in 2003 was inaccurate, as detailed here.)
Bush added that now that he understood what was being asked, he would not answer, because it was a hypothetical question. “Yeah, I don’t know what the answer would’ve been. That’s a hypothetical question.”
Then, yesterday at a town hall, Bush said that he would not answer the question because doing so would be disrespectful to soldiers that died in the war. ABC News reported:
“If we’re going to get into hypotheticals I think it does a disservice for a lot of people that sacrificed a lot,” Bush said after explaining that as governor of Florida he called the family members of service men and women who lost their lives in the war.
Today, at an event in Arizona, he answered the hypothetical question. “Knowing what we know now I would not have engaged — I would not have gone into Iraq,” Bush said.
What changed? Bush’s non-answer had become a political liability. Many of Bush’s top rivals for the Republican presidential nomination — including Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie — all publicly answered the hypothetical question.
They all said they would not have gone into Iraq.