Worldview: Jeb Bush, Iraq and the truth

(Philadelphia Inquirer) - As ISIS barbarities make headlines, Republican presidential candidates are scrambling to outdo each other's hawkish pronouncements on foreign policy. That makes political sense. With the economy improving, polls show that voters now consider terrorism to be as important a campaign issue for 2016 as economic issues. And Obam's incoherent efforts to degrade ISIS make him an easy target. But when Jeb Bush, in a major foreign policy speech last week, tried to pin the blame of ISIS's rise entirely on Obama it made my blood boil. The mideast collapse that paved the way for the terrorists' rise was precipitated by his brother's misbegotten war in Iraq. And if the GOP hopefuls continue to whitewash George W.'s strategic errors (and Jeb has hired some of the very advisors who made them, such as former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz), then Republicans will surely repeat those errors if they take the White House in 2016. Read more.