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The former Florida governor, who is likely to run for the
Republican presidential nomination in 2016, had told Fox News in
an interview broadcast on Sunday that "I would have" authorized
the invasion.
The comment fed a narrative pushed by Democrats that Jeb Bush is
little different from his brother, who left office in early 2009
with his popularity weakened by the Iraq war and a faltering
U.S. economy.
Jeb Bush on Tuesday went on the talk radio show conducted by
conservative Sean Hannity to try to quiet the controversy.
"I don't know what that decision would have been. That's a
hypothetical," Bush said when asked by Hannity whether he would
have ordered an invasion of Iraq.
George W. Bush made his decision to go to war and assembled an
international coalition to help the United States carry it out
based on intelligence indicating Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The intelligence turned out to be wrong, and the decision to go
to war remains a topic of hot debate in the United States as
Iraq is in turmoil with the rise of Islamic State militants.
"Clearly, there were mistakes [in] faulty intelligence. My
brother has admitted this, and we have to learn from that," Jeb
Bush told Hannity.
Bush also said that he had misinterpreted the question that Fox
News anchor Megyn Kelly had posed to him in the interview.
(Reporting by Emily Stephenson and Steve Holland; Editing by Dan
Grebler)
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