Bush says Iraq war, not Ukraine, ‘unjustified’ in speech gaffe

Former President George W. Bush is facing criticism after mistakenly describing the invasion of Iraq — which he led as commander in chief — as “brutal” and “wholly unjustified,” before correcting himself to say he meant to refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean of Ukraine,” Bush said Wednesday night during a speech at his presidential center in Dallas.

The 75-year-old former president jokingly blamed the mistake on his age, shaking his head and correcting himself, drawing laughter from the crowd.

“Iraq, too — anyway,” he added, before moving on without explaining the Iraq reference.

In his remarks, Bush also likened Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, a comparison he also made earlier this month after meeting with Zelenskyy via video chat, according to social posts from his presidential center.

But the comment, which was quickly and widely shared on social media, drew condemnation from critics pointing to Bush’s decision to launch a U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, an inquiry into alleged weapons of mass destruction that were never discovered.

“If you were George W. Bush, you think you’d just steer clear of giving any speech about one man launching a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion,” former Rep. Justin Amash, I-Mich., wrote on Twitter.

“I wish he would have been this honest and critical of himself 20 years, countless lives, and trillions of dollars ago,” Donald Trump Jr. said in a tweet.