How Would Reagan Have Answered the Iraq War Question?

Scott Walker is the latest entrant into the "would you have invaded Iraq" sweepstakes.

"Any president would have likely taken the same action [President George W.] Bush did with the information he had, even Hillary Clinton voted for it, but knowing what we know now, we should not have gone into Iraq," the Wisconsin governor and likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate told the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin.

Walker went on to praise Bush's surge and criticize President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a hasty withdrawal in 2011.

This question has been giving Republican presidential candidates fits since former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush flubbed his response to Fox News' Megyn Kelly at the beginning of the week. The consensus seems to be that the Iraq war was a mistake based on what we know now about the weapons of mass destruction, but a mistake that was understandable at the time and compounded by the Obama administration's error in bugging out before the gains made during the surge could be consolidated.

For a party that often talks about a "neo-Reaganite" foreign policy, there's a difference between how most Republican presidential candidates are talking about Iraq and how Ronald Reagan talked about Vietnam, another war that was more popular with the GOP base than the public at large.

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