Ex-aide says Jeb Bush ‘misheard’ Iraq question

A former aide to Jeb Bush said Tuesday that the former Florida governor “misheard” a question from Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly about whether he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq.

Bush said in the interview that aired Monday that knowing what he knows now about the war and the intelligence leading up to it, he still would have authorized the 2003 invasion. 

{mosads}But the former aide, Ana Navarro, said Bush simply misspoke.

“I emailed him this morning and I said to him, ‘Hey, I’m a little confused by this answer so I’m genuinely wondering did you mishear the question?,’ ” Navarro said on CNN’s “New Day.” “And he said, ‘Yes, I misheard the question.’ ”

Bush’s response has provoked criticism from figures on the right, who question why he’s standing by the decision to get involved in the unpopular war when even his brother, former President George W. Bush, who authorized the invasion, has admitted it was based on bad intelligence.

An email to a Bush spokesman requesting clarification has not been returned.

In the interview that aired Monday, Kelly asked Bush if, “knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?”

“I would,” Bush responded. “And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everyone. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”

Bush went on to call the intelligence that indicated Iraq had weapons of mass destruction “faulty,” and said it was a mistake not to focus on securing the nation after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham went on Twitter to blast Bush for his answer, saying he showed “no ability to learn from the past.”

Conservative columnist Byron York wrote in the Washington Examiner that Bush’s defense of the war was “disastrous.”