Ex President George Bush mocked for gaffe: ‘wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean Ukraine’
Former American president George Bush Jr has come in for ridicule after accidentally referring to the “illegal invasion of Iraq” during a speech about the war in Ukraine.
The ex Republican leader, 75, made the Freudian slip during an event in Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday, at an institute in his name.
In a video posted on Twitter by journalist Michael Williams of Dallas News, which has been viewed more than nine million times, he said: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”
Bush instantly realises his error, sheepishly grins and says: “I mean of Ukraine”, before mumbling “Iraq” and “75” in reference to his age, leading to laughter from the audience.
It was retweeted more than five-thousand times from Williams account, and more than 80,000 times after being shared by Sahil Kapur NBCNews’ Senior National Political Reporter
During the clip, which Twitter users dined out on accusing him of irony for the US-led invasion in the early 2000s, Bush compared Ukraine’s president Vlodymyr Zelensky to Winston Churchill.
He also said: “Russian elections are rigged. Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process”, while criticising there “absence is an absence of checks and balances in Russia”.
Watch the gaffe here: