"I recognize that as a result, my views will often be held up in comparison to theirs’— sometimes in contrast to theirs’," he will add, according to prepared remarks provided by his aides in advance. "I love my father and my brother. I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions they had to make. But I am my own man — and my views are shaped by my own thinking and own experiences. Each president learns from those who came before — their principles … their adjustments. One thing we know is this: Every president inherits a changing world … and changing circumstances."

Many of them are from past Republican administrations, including those of his father and brother as well as that of Ronald Reagan.

The list includes people representing a wide spectrum of ideological views in the Republican Party, from the pragmatic to the hawkish. It includes James Baker, known for his pragmatism in key roles during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies, and former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, a hawk as deputy defense secretary who was an architect of George W. Bush's Iraq policy.

Among others are two former secretaries of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, former national security adviser Stephen Hadley and a deputy national security adviser, Meghan O'Sullivan, as well as two former CIA directors, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden.

And nine days after that attack, PNAC sent a letter to Bush II saying that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”

But only two (two!) of the 25 original signers of PNAC’s statement of principles are on Bush’s advisers list: former undersecretary of state Paula Dobriansky and our old pal, former deputy secretary of defense and then president of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz.

Oh. Wait! There was another PNAC original who might count: John Ellis “Jeb” Bush.

In 1986, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush offered an unsatisfying, passive-voice explanation for the Iran-Contra scandal in which the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran in order to finance an illegal war on Nicaragua.
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“Clearly, mistakes were made,” Bush said.

In 2004, then-President George W. Bush offered an eerily similar unsatisfying, passive-voice explanation for the Abu Ghraib scandal, in which U.S. officials tortured detainees at an Iraqi prison:
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“It’s also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy, everything is not perfect, that mistakes are made,” Bush said.

In 2015, former Gov. Jeb Bush offered a practically identical, unsatisfying, passive-voice explanation for his brother’s catastrophic war in Iraq, launched under false pretenses, and bungled every step of the way.
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“Let’s go to Iraq,” Bush said during the Q&A at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “There were mistakes made in Iraq, for sure.”

One family, multiple scandals, one phrase.

Bush’s clunky, rushed delivery paled in comparison to the hazy facts in the speech and vague answers he gave during a Q&A session following his remarks.

Speaking of the extremist group based in Nigeria that has killed thousands of civilians, Bush referred to Boko Haram as “Beau-coup Haram.” Bush also referred to Iraq when he meant to refer to Iran.

Further, Bush misrepresented the strength of ISIS, saying it has some 200,000 men, which is far greater than the U.S. intelligence community’s estimates. Last week National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen pegged the fighting strength of ISIS at between 20,000 and 31,500. (snip)

Bush did coin a new term—“liberty diplomacy”—and spoke of the need for the United States to be engaged around the world. He also endorsed the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of Americans, which began under his brother following 9/11, as “hugely important.”