Michael Bloomberg says he doesn't regret supporting the Iraq War


Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg believes the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "a mistake," but doesn't regret supporting former President George W. Bush's decision to go to war.
The 2003 invasion came in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and Bloomberg told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that at the time, "America wanted to go to war, but it turns out it was based on faulty intelligence, and it was a mistake. But I think people that made the mistake did it honestly, and it's a shame, because it's left us entangled, and it's left the Middle East in chaos through today."
At the time, Bloomberg was the Republican mayor of New York City. He was a Democrat before that, became an independent in 2007, and returned to the Democratic Party in 2018. While he now sees the invasion as a grave error, he doesn't have any qualms with his previous support of it. "I don't live in a regret world and I didn't make that decision," he told the Times.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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