Did Marco Rubio Just Flip-Flop On the Iraq War?

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), positioning himself for a run at the GOP presidential nomination, appears to have flip-flopped on the Iraq war.

For years, Rubio maintained he would have still gone to war knowing what we know today: that Iraq didn’t actually possess the purported weapons of mass program that George W. Bush used to justify the invasion. In a question-and-answer session after a speech outlining his foreign policy vision at the Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday, he reversed course.

“Not only would I not have been in favor of it, President [George W.] Bush wouldn’t have been in favor of it and he said so,” Rubio told journalist Charlie Rose, who was leading the session.

Rubio’s reversal adds him to the growing list of GOP contenders trying to come to terms with how to talk about the Iraq War, which sharp majorities of Americans from both parties regard as a mistake. In recent days, Jeb Bush said he would still go to war in Iraq. Under fire, he changed his answer and insisted he wouldn’t.

Rubio’s comments are at odds with at least two of his previous statements. In March, he said on Fox he would have gone to war and that the world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein. This is a claim he repeated in 2010 during an interview with CNN.

He took a different stance Wednesday.

“Ultimately though, I do not believe that if the intelligence had said Iraq does not have a weapon of mass destruction capability, I don’t believe President Bush would have authorized to move forward,” Rubio said.

Photo Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images