One week after Jeb Bush found himself in the hot seat over the apparent conflict in his remarks about the invasion of Iraq, Sen. Marco Rubio is in hot water for similar comments.
Responding to Bush’s comments during his address at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rubio explained emphatically that, knowing what we know now, he would not have been in favor of the 2003 Iraq invasion.
But the remarks seemed to be in direct contradiction to his statement just two months ago in which he appeared to support then-President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq.
In an interview on Sunday with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Rubio push back against the suggestion that he had flip-flopped on the issue pointing out that there are two very different questions.
On the one hand, Rubio explained, Bush’s decision to invade Iraq based on the intelligence he had at the time was “the right decision.” On the other hand, Rubio reminded, President Bush said himself he would not have proceeded with the invasion if he had known the intelligence was bad.
It is a very thin thread of rhetoric on an issue that still sours voters to Republicans who appear prone to foreign entanglements. Regardless of the logic, it is virtually certain that Democrats will exploit the rhetoric in the coming months to paint the two top GOP contenders as pro-war.
