George W. Bush Calls Iraq War ‘Unjustified and Brutal,' Later Says He Meant Ukraine

Former U.S. President George W. Bush speaks during the flag raising ceremony prior to The Walker Cup at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla., on May 7, 2021. Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images

Former President George W. Bush accidentally condemned the “unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq” but quickly corrected himself to say he meant to refer to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bush, who launched the invasion of Iraq in 2003, made the error during a speech in Texas on Wednesday, a clip of which has been circulating on social media.

“Russian elections are rigged, political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process,” he said. “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.”

Bush, shaking his head, then corrected himself. “I mean, of Ukraine,” he remarked, before saying under his breath, “Iraq, too.” After the audience burst out laughing, he blamed the error on his age: “I’m 75.”

“The way countries conduct elections is indicative of how their leaders treat their own people, and how nations behave toward other nations,” Bush continued. “And nowhere is this on display more clearly than Ukraine.

As the clip went viral on Twitter, prominent personalities criticized the former president.

“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 Twitter post.

“George Bush is laughing in this clip because he knows he and every other Iraq War supporter were rewarded with riches and big media jobs for their work killing a million people, rather than being held accountable and shunned,” wrote David Sirota, a former speechwriter for  Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign.

In 2003, the United States launched an invasion of Iraq due to weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs, that were never located. The war resulted in the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, but led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and thousands of American soldiers before troops were withdrawn in 2011.

Three years later, in 2014, American soldiers were sent back to Iraq to deal with the ISIS terrorist group, which controlled portions of Syria and Iraq.

Writing in his memoir years later, Bush said that “no one was more shocked and angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons” of mass destruction. “I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.”

The former president also likened Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Britain’s leader Winston Churchill. He also condemned the Kremlin for launching its invasion. On Thursday, Congress approved a $40 billion package to send to Ukraine, which is slated to be signed by President Joe Biden.