During a question and answer period following a foreign policy speech on Wednesday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) conceded that there were mistakes made during his brother’s time presiding over the war in Iraq.
“Let’s go to Iraq,” Bush said during the Q&A at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “There were mistakes made in Iraq, for sure.”
Bush said that information the intelligence community used on weapons of mass destruction turned out “not to be accurate.” He also said that the U.S. didn’t focus enough on security after Saddam Hussein was removed from power, adding that that was “a mistake because Iraqis wanted security more than anything else.”
Bush’s comments at the Chicago Council speech were some of the few he’s made on Iraq since he began taking serious steps towards a possible presidential run. A few days before his speech, Bush said that he wouldn’t focus on past mistakes in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The former governor did offer praise for his brother’s handling of the wars in the Middle East. He said former President George W. Bush’s late surge of forces was “hugely successful.”