Former US president George Bush, in a speech, was seen making virtue signalling sermons against ‘one man’s decision to invade a country’, in an attempt to criticise Vladimir Putin. However, Bush mentioned that country as ‘Iraq’ in an apparent slip of the tongue, only to correct it later and say that he meant Ukraine.
Bush was reportedly speaking on the issue of election integrity at the Southern Methodist University’s George W. Bush Institute. While criticising Russia’s election process, he said, “Russian elections are rigged. Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from the electoral process”.
“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”, the ex-President of the USA blurted out. Then, a moment later, he corrected himself adding ‘I mean of Ukraine, heh”.
Noticing that the audience has laughed, he then muttered, “Iraq too, .. anyway, 75, huh” conveying that the apparent gaffe was because of his age.
US invasion of Iraq under Bush
While Bush was the President of the USA, the USA had claimed that the Saddam Hussain regime had harboured weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and had started a brutal invasion of the country in 2003 while trying to justify the barbaric attacks and hundreds of civilian deaths as a ‘fight for democracy’.
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq. The US invasion and carpet bombings had destroyed the country, caused hundreds of civilian deaths and plummeted the region into chaos. Over 250,000 people died as a result of Bush’s war on Iraq, including over 5000 us soldiers.
The USA, UK, Australia and Poland had started a massive war that involved ‘shock and awe’ bombings against Iraqi installations, both military and civilian. Saddam Hussain was captured and executed 3 years later. The then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had called the invasion illegal and a violation of the UN charter.
The resultant unrest and chaos fanned widespread conflicts in the region.