Former President George W. Bush spoke privately over the weekend at a closed-door fundraiser, where he finally said what he thought of President Obama’s foreign policy. His remarks were written down by an attendee, and then were written up by Josh Rogin for Bloomberg View.

Bush said that Obama’s plan to lift sanctions on Iran with a promise that they could snap back in place at any time was not plausible. He also said the deal would be bad for American national security in the long term: “You think the Middle East is chaotic now? Imagine what it looks like for our grandchildren. That’s how Americans should view the deal.”

Bush then went into a detailed criticism of Obama’s policies in fighting the Islamic State and dealing with the chaos in Iraq. On Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of 2011, he quoted Senator Lindsey Graham calling it a “strategic blunder.” Bush signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw those troops, but the idea had been to negotiate a new status of forces agreement to keep U.S. forces there past 2011. The Obama administration tried and failed to negotiate such an agreement.

Bush said he views the rise of the Islamic State as al-Qaeda’s “second act” and that they may have changed the name but that murdering innocents is still the favored tactic. He defended his own administration’s handling of terrorism, noting that the terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was captured on his watch: “Just remember the guy who slit Danny Pearl’s throat is in Gitmo, and now they’re doing it on TV.”

Well, any and all criticism of the Obama administration means that President Thin-Skinned MUST have a retort. In this case, it was press secretary Josh Earnest who got sent out with the oldest political excuse – it’s all Bush’s fault.

But Earnest told reporters that it was Bush who actually set the stage for the Islamic State by invading Iraq in the first place in 2003. Earnest called this point a “historical fact.”

“I do think that we’ve made the case aggressively before, and I think that’s backed up by extensive evidence, that there are links between al Qaeda … and ISIL. And the fact is al Qaeda was not in Iraq prior to President Bush’s decision to commit significant American military resources on the ground in that country,” he said.

Earnest also tweaked Bush by suggesting Obama was elected primarily as a result of the American public rebuking the Bush administration’s foreign policy decisions.

“The fact that President Bush has a different perspective and a different philosophy when it comes to foreign policy, isn’t just a well-known difference [between them],” he added. “In the minds of many people, it’s the principle reason that President Obama is sitting in the Oval Office right now.”

Oh, so THAT’S why Obama’s current job approval rating on foreign policy sits at 38.4 percent, with 52.9 percent disapproving. It’s all President Bush’s fault for letting ISIS overrun Iraq because the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

The problem, of course, is that Obama has been president for the last six years, and he has freely admitted that he’s leaving whatever mess gets created with Iran for the next president to deal with. The chaos in Syria and Libya are both now a permanent part of his foreign policy legacy. The rise of ISIS belongs in his column. To attempt to link it backward to the invasion of Iraq is desperate and pathetic. Which is pretty much par for the course when it comes to this administration’s ability to accept responsibility for mistakes.