Jeb Declares Himself Unfit to Be President

Despite sounding somewhat reasonable on a number of issues, Jeb Bush has now made it abundantly clear that he is not fit to be president:

After telling a group of fundraisers behind closed doors that former President George W. Bush was one of his advisers on the Middle East, the likely 2016 GOP hopeful followed that up telling Fox News' Megyn Kelly that he would have authorized the Iraq War — even knowing what we know now.

Yes, Jeb would repeat perhaps the biggest blunder in American foreign policy history: invading Iraq (a close second was Johnson's invasion of Vietnam, so I'm not being partisan here).

Why was invading Iraq so spectacularly stupid? Let us count the ways:

• The war was based on two lies: that Saddam was developing WMDs and was involved in 9/11.
• Bush was either duped into going to war by the Iranian spy Ahmed Chalabi and "Curveball," or else he knowingly repeated their lies.
• The war drastically increased the strength of Iran's hand, toppling the Iraqi bulwark against Iran, and turning Iran's greatest enemy into Iran's puppet.
• The war created thousands of Islamic terrorists when it became obvious the war was based on a lie.
• The Iraq war turned the focus away from the war in Afghanistan, preventing a quick resolution and withdrawal there, and getting us mired in the longest war the American military has ever fought.
• The Iraq war turned Muslim opinion against the United States when the torture at Abu Ghraib was revealed, creating more terrorists.
• The wars inflamed Muslim opinion in the United States, leading to terrorist attacks at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, etc.
• The war created ISIS when Paul Bremer threw all the Sunnis in the Iraqi army to the wolves of Shia-led government.
• The war wasted a trillion dollars of American taxpayer money, some of it in cash sent to Iraq by the planeload where it was doled out to Iraqi warlords and stolen by mercenaries.
• The war was never put on the budget, creating the huge debt that Republicans are always complaining about.
• The war killed 5,000 American military service members, killed thousands more "contractors," and injured and maimed 32,000 service members.
• IEDs used in the war inflicted traumatic brain injuries and PTSD on hundreds of thousands of American vets.
• Thousands of vets sustained injuries that will require medical treatment for the rest of the lives, which will cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars over the next several decades ($1.3 trillion for both Iraq and Afghanistan).
• Extended deployments destroyed tens of thousands of marriages of American service members.
• The war convinced North Korea that it had to build nuclear weapons to ensure their survival, which the DPRK first tested in 2006. Of course, since he was totally wrapped up with two other wars, Bush could do absolutely nothing to deal with North Korea.
• The war convinced Iran that it too needed nukes.
• The war led to instability in other countries around the Middle East, including Syria, Libya, Egypt, etc.
• Oh, and the war killed hundreds of thousands totally innocent Iraqi civilians.

And what did we get out of the Iraq war?

• We killed a toothless dictator who was too proud to admit that he was no longer a threat to anyone.

The after-the-invasion goal Bush cooked up after his lies about WMDs and 9/11 were exposed -- bringing democracy to Iraq -- hasn't worked out very well at all, considering how the ayatollahs in Iran now run Iraq.

It's clear that Bush's family issues and his inability to acknowledge obvious truths disqualify him from being president. He would make exactly the same mistakes W did, and would never admit it.

Of course, that disqualifies just about every other Republican candidate as well, save perhaps Rand Paul. But he has other fantasies that disqualify him.