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On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush pretended to land a fighter jet on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, announcing that major combat operations in Iraq were at an end.
“In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.“
Complete bullshit, of course. Although he never spoke the words “Mission Accomplished,” there was the biggest banner on the planet screaming the words behind him. The White House later tried to say that it was the crew members of the Lincoln celebrating their mission being accomplished. Nice of the White House to provide the sign, eh?
To the date, approximately 213 of our troops had died in Iraq. Now there are 4063 dead, and counting.
There is no “Mission Accomplished” for the men and women whose lives George W. Bush has wasted in this illegal war. No 21st birthdays, no falling in love, no wedding days, no babies, no grandchildren, no career, no retirement or growing old.
Our troops deserve better than this. Will they ever forgive us?
From ThinkProgress: Emanuel: On baseball and Iraq, Bush is ‘0 for 2.’
Juan Cole of Informed Comment remembered today with a number of quotes from Bush’s now-famous (or ‘infamous’) speech.
Here are his excerpts:
‘ . . . major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. . .
And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country. . .
In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world. . .
Because of you our nation is more secure. . . [Note that he is trying to attribute to the poor enlisted men his policies.] . . .
In the images of fallen statues we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. . . [The statue was pulled down by the US military and the whole thing was staged before a tiny Iraqi crowd, the small size of which media close-ups disguised.] . . .
In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. . . [The US has probably directly killed about 200,000 Iraqis and destroyed the city of Fallujah as well as damaging and repeatedly bombing others. Bush's fascist attempt to reconfigure warfare as a humanitarian gesture is the biggest lie of all] . . .
Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. [Foreign military occupation is not generally considered 'liberty' by most people.] . . .
We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. [The sites were being investigated before the war, and nothing was being found, so Bush pulled out the inspectors and went to war. Nothing ever was found.] . . .
Our coalition will stay until our work is done and then we will leave and we will leave behind a free Iraq. [When will that be exactly?] . . .
In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban . . . [ Maybe not so much; this 'mission accomplished' passage has not been sufficiently criticized] . . .
The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaida and cut off a source of terrorist funding. [There was no operational connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. None. And the US occupation of Iraq gave al-Qaeda a new lease on life ] . . .
We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, Iraq and in a peaceful Palestine. . . [90% of the world fell down laughing at that point in the speech; only gullible, self-righteous Americans could even think about taking this snow job seriously] . . .
Just to give you an idea of how staged, choreographed, and calculated this speech actually was, here is an excerpt from Frank Rich’s book “The Greatest Story Ever Sold” (which I highly recommend):
(Excerpts from pages 90-91):
The President’s speech came precisely at dusk in the West – Hollywood’s so-called magic hour, much prized by cinematographers for the golden glow it bestows on any scene. Sforza, the master of the backdrop, had seen to it that a banner with the simple message MISSION ACCOMPLISHED was posted high up so that it appeared as a halo hovering over the president, much as the Statue of Liberty had appeared at Bush’s 9/11 anniversary speech as the war’s rollout began. The ranks of color-coordinated costumes as bright as the future. “Officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans,” the president declared, “major combat operations in Iraq have ended”.
If there was a single aesthetic that dominated this rousing scene it was that of Jerry Bruckheimer, the hugely successful producer of Armageddon, Black Hawk Down, and Top Gun, the movie specifically reenacted by Bush in his flyboy landing on the Lincoln. Bruckheimer had enjoyed a happy partnership with the Rumsfeld Pentagon from the get-go. The gala premier party for Bruckheimer’s summer 2001 movie Pearl Harbor, which took place just four months before America’s next real-life Pearl Harbor, had been held on the similarly impressive aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. The Bruckheimer-Defense Department collaboration had continued with the short-lived ABC prime-time entertainment series Tales from the Front Lines, which presented the American mission in Afghanistan as an MTV-paced joy ride. As the Stennis had been generously dispatched from San Diego to Hawaii for the Pearl Harbor gala, so the return of the Lincoln and its eagerly homeward-bound troops to San Diego was stalled by a day to accommodate the pageantry of Bush’s tailhook landing. One day, after all, was a relatively minor delay for troops whose deployment at sea had already been extended from six months to nearly ten, the longest by a carrier in thirty years, to help the maw of an understaffed war.
Like Pearl Harbor, which turned its title attack and its aftermath into a pretty blood-free victory jig, the new White House production sweetened reality. The Abraham Lincoln was not in the middle of the sea, as it appeared to the innocent television viewer, but only positioned to look that way: if the camera angle had been different, it would have revealed the San Diego skyline fewer than forty miles away. The president’s past as a pilot had been cleaned up in the editing room: no one mentioned that his attendance record had been spotty in the Texas Air National Guard, and his flying had been nowhere near a war. In this sense, the Bush celebratory May Day flight did the job as effectively as Ronald Reagan’s 1984 D-Day anniversary appearance in Normandy. Equipped with his own aircraft carrier backdrop, Reagan forever cemented the national fantasy that his own wartime service had been on the front rather than in the safe film-industry have of Culver City, California.
