‘Mission Accomplished’ revisited
With the Senate having passed its war spending bill this afternoon, the final version of the legislation will reach the Oval Office on Tuesday — the fourth anniversary of the president’s now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech.
The speech continues to be a touchy subject for the White House. In January, Tony Snow insisted, with a straight face, that the president’s message was the “opposite” of “mission accomplished,” and the banner was the fault of the troops on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Snow, of course, was wrong about the message, and wrong about the banner.
Given this, congressional Dems, who usually don’t excel in political theater, deserve some credit for sending the spending bill to the White House on the anniversary of this humiliating memory. Not surprisingly, the Bush gang doesn’t quite see it this way. From this morning’s gaggle:
“And I think that if it is the case that they withheld money for the troops in order to try to play some ridiculous PR stunt, that that is the height of cynicism, and absolutely so unfortunate for the men and women in uniform and their families who are watching the debate — and you would hope that that is not true, although it does make you wonder, why did the House wait so long to appoint conferees?”
If the White House were really concerned about “some ridiculous PR stunt,” maybe the Bush gang can explain the USS Lincoln event in the first place. As the Boston Globe reported four years ago, “[T]he carrier was just 30 miles from shore by the time he arrived, and officials said it had slowed down so that Bush could spend the night on board before the USS Abraham Lincoln docks today, extending by one day the sailors’ almost 10-month deployment at sea, the longest by a carrier in 30 years.”
What was that Perino was saying about the height of cynicism?
The dissembling only got worse from there.
Q: Dana, on the “mission accomplished” speech, though, wasn’t the phrase something to the effect of, “the battle of Baghdad is over”? Clearly that’s not true.
PERINO: I think it was — it was major combat. And I — it was major combat operations. And at that point, if you’re going back — I’m not the greater historian on this, since I was at the Council on Environmental Quality during this episode, but Baghdad did fall very quickly. One of the things that we have learned over the years is how strong, first of all, that al Qaeda would be in Iraq, that they would set up this battle as, in their own words, the battle to win. And we did not know that their stoking of sectarian violence would do what it did last year. We had — at the end of 2005 and early 2006, you had the votes for a government and a vote for a constitution with millions of people in Iraq. And it looked like we were moving towards a period of political reconciliation. And then if you look at the marker of the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February of 2006, it really started this chain reaction, which is — then in the fall of 2006, the President heard the call of the American people who wanted to see a change in Iraq, and he underwent an extensive review, a comprehensive review which led to the new Baghdad security plan, which is now under way as General Petraeus —
Q: Four years ago he said major combat operations were over. All those things happened after he said major combat operations were over. Wasn’t that a rosy scenario?
PERINO: He said that — he also said that a transition from democracy — I’m sorry, the transition from dictatorship to democracy would take time. And — go ahead.
Q: Are you really blaming al Qaeda for the sectarian violence in Iraq?
PERINO: I think there’s multiple factors, and I think that even General Petraeus said yesterday that their whole aim — if you look at that Zarqawi to Zawahiri letter, their whole aim was to try to stoke sectarian violence. They love chaos, they want to fill the vacuum with their extremist ideology.
Q: Are you suggesting that if it wasn’t for al Qaeda, there wouldn’t be sectarian violence?
PERINO: No, I’m not suggesting that. But what we do know, and it has been established by the MNFI forces and the intelligence community, if you just look at the NIE that we released in January of 2007 that that is the consensus opinion of the national security agencies of this country.
Q: But they’re not the only ones responsible. The sectarian divisions existed before, and were exacerbated by the war.
PERINO: I don’t think that we’re — we’re not arguing that it wasn’t.
I’m glad Tony Snow is returning to the podium next week. Between Perino’s lies and Snow’s lies, the latter tends to be more entertaining.
In all fairness to “Mission Accomplished,” at the time, we were all wondering which day we could shift from constant war mode (i.e. non-stop news coverage, day-by-day battles) back to regular mode. So they arranged a “War Over” event to mark that transition.
The carrier landing stunt was wholly bogus, no question about it.
“…we did not know that their stoking of sectarian violence would do what it did last year.”
Here Perino blames terrorists with producing consequences which Dick Cheney his bad self predicted in 1991, as he explained a few years later.
One of the biggest problems with making things up as you go is that sometimes you may forget what has already been validated, or ruled invalid. Then, what an awkward moment when others not involved with making things up ask a couple simple questions that undermine the things you’ve already made up, but are now finding difficult to answer without undermining some of the things you’ll need to make up in order to keep the things you’ve made up from looking like they were made up. Boy, no wonder the WH personnel get paid so much! -Kevo
The Battle of Baghdad (and Iraq) WAS over. We had conquered an army which, while posing no threat to us, had been all but destroyed by the Bush’s father a decade earlier. Not much of a victory, but a victory nevertheless.
What began next was yet another failed attempt by a Western nation to occupy part of the Middle East (compare the French in Algeria). The attempt at occupation was stupid, which is to say it was in keeping with Bush’s success record all his life.
I think it’s rather stunning how Dana made admissions that the U.S. severely underestimated a number of things: they underestimated the will of those who would oppose a U.S. occupation (OK, by the coalition of the silly), they didn’t count on sectarian tensions bubbling up (“I thought they were all Muslims?” – W), and they foolishly believed that the elections would be the end of everything.
I rather like Dana over Tony. She tries to lie through a veil of inferences, but as you can see in the exchange above, she’ll retreat to less mendacious territory when pressed. Tony just lies his ass off with his smug retorts and belittling comments. What’s to like about that? I’d rather people were angered by the lies coming out of the White House than entertained by them.
Not only that, the ship had to alter course so the San Diego shoreline wouldn’t be in the background.
An interesting thing happened last fall at a model show I attended. Someone had built a very nice model of the S-3B Viking Bush flew onto the Lincoln in, with a special set of decals out to do “Navy 1”. About 20 minutes after I first saw the model, I was back at that table, and someone had brought their fist down on it – it was in pieces. And this is a hobby that has a huuuuuuuge number of rightwingers and career military in it.
Don’t overlook this part: “if it is the case that they withheld money for the troops.”
Um, Dana…I know this is hard for you and the other wingnuts to understand, but nobody is withholding any funding for the troops. Well, except for your boss when he vetoes the bill.
Republicans can whine all they want about Democratic “political stunts,” but statements made to Congress by General Petraeus about how long and deeply we will have to be involved in Iraq to succeed at all, will do far more to remind people of Captain Codpiece’s own carrier stunt. They were sobering and damning statements.
Chickens. Home. Roost.
Can someone please ask Perino if Bush really believed that Saddam Hussein was “an ally of al qaeda”?
That’s what he said on the Lincoln.
If so, why was he so stupid, and if not, why did he lie?
I love Obama’s comment that we are one signature away from ending this war. That is the kind of rhetorical style that Dems have been missing. “One Signature Away”. The Hillary/Biden/Kerry-type dronings even make me tune out and I’m a political junkie (although Biden has given some rather impassioned speeches of late that I’ve liked). Edwards also had a pretty good suggestion saying that the Dems should submit this to Bush over and over and over again until he gets it that the American people want our troops out of there. I don’t know if there’s the political will for that but I wonder why there isn’t….
I second Homer’s (#9) “I don’t know if there’s the political will…” Constant resubmission would be easy and, in the long run, effective. Which makes me suspect that the Democrats won’t do it.
Promise Bush that if he doesn’t veto the war spending bill, he could have a dress up play day and pretend to be all of his fantasy characters (a fighter pilot, a cowboy gunslinger, a 9-11 fireman, hard workin disaster worker (rolled up sleeves), or his latest a zany African drummer.
Wow bitterness and then some around here. It’s hard to believe the Democrats are in charge. Hmm must be some reason for this?
I was struck by the note about extending the tour of the USS Lincoln by 1 day. Since a aircraft carrier has about 5,000 sailors, this amounts to about 14 man-years total.
I wonder if we can ask Bush to give it back to them?
I was struck by the fact that in WWII the tours of duty were 2 to 4 years, unless seriously wounded. Could you imagine spending years on those old tin cans in the South Pacific with no AC, no TV, no internet, eating spam, drinking powdered milk, getting mail once a month if lucky? Those were some hard corps mothers.