This was one of those moments when someone accidentally tells the truth. Via the Washington Post:
It was the “decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” former president George W. Bush said Wednesday before quickly correcting himself, saying he meant to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
“Iraq, too, anyway,” he added under his breath to laughter from the audience during a speech at his presidential center in Dallas.
But while the joke landed with some, many were quick to pounce on his verbal slip after nearly two decades of sharp criticism that Bush was unjustified in directing the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, with some lobbing accusations that the 43rd president is a war criminal — the same label some have given Putin after his invasion of Ukraine this year, which has been widely criticized by the international community as illegal and inhumane.