Former US President George W. Bush has mistakenly called the invasion of Iraq “brutal” and “unjustified” before correcting himself by saying that he was referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bush made the comments in a speech at an event in Dallas on Wednesday, while criticizing Russia’s political system.
“The result is a lack of checks and balances in Russia, and one man’s decision to launch a brutal and totally unwarranted invasion of Iraq,” Bush said, before correcting himself and shaking his head. “I mean, from Ukraine.”
He jokingly blamed the mistake on his age while the audience burst out laughing. It didn’t take long for it to go viral thanks to a tweet from a Dallas News reporter.
In 2003, when Bush was president, the United States led an invasion of Iraq claiming weapons of mass destruction that they never found. The US entry into the Arab country killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced many more.
The former US president also compared Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, while condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin for launching the invasion of Ukraine in February.
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