Reagan’s son criticises Bush over Iraq war

Ron Reagan, the younger son of the late US President Ronald Reagan, has criticised George Bush’s foreign policy, saying Americans were misled into supporting the Iraq war.

“We lied our way into the war,” Mr Reagan said on the CNN Larry King Live programme referring to allegations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and direct connections to the al Qaida terrorist network. “It’s a terrible mistake, a terrible foreign policy error.”

Mr Reagan, 46, was a vocal opponent of his father’s conservative politics. He said he would vote for anyone who could beat the current US President.

Mr Reagan also said he was angered over the Bush administration’s restriction of federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

“It’s shameful,” he said. “We’re not talking about foetuses, human beings being killed. We’re talking about collections of cells in a petri dish that are never ever going to be a human being.”

Mr Reagan said he expected his mother to continue to speak out in favour of stem cell research.

Nancy Reagan has long argued that such work could lead to cures for a number of diseases like the Alzheimer’s that afflicted her husband.