While speaking at an event at his presidential center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Bush described it as the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq", immediately realising the mistake.
"I mean, of Ukraine," he corrected himself immediately, adding under his breath, “Iraq, too,". Laughing along with the audience after the slip-up, the 75-year-old pinned the mistake on his age.
“The way countries conduct elections is indicative of how their leaders treat their own people, and how nations behave toward other nations. And nowhere is this on display more clearly than Ukraine," Bush was quoted as saying in The Dallas Morning News report.
Alleging that democracy in Russia is a farce, Bush said: "Russian elections are rigged."
"Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process. The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine," he added.
During the event, Bush also described Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the 21st century Churchill" and also called him a “good little guy".
Bush’s mistake, which many social media users considered “Freudian", made way for him to receive a flak from the general public.
In 2003, it was the Bush administration in power when a US-led coalition, comprising the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland, invaded Iraq.
Bush and Tony Blair, who were the President and Prime Minister of the US and the UK respectively back then, had said that their aim was "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people".
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