Just to follow up briefly on the previous post, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow also had a gem yesterday about one of the more ridiculous photo-ops of recent memory.
Q: Tony, this goes to your previous acknowledgment that the President is aware of public anxiety about the situation in Iraq. What would your guidance be to a public that has seen the President stand under a “Mission Accomplished” banner, proclaim an end to major combat operations, the Vice President talking about the “last throes” — how should the public go into viewing this speech tomorrow?
Snow: I think the public ought to just listen to what the President has to say. You know that the “Mission Accomplished” banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln. And the President, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn’t he?
Think Progress explained how and why the “just the opposite” line is wrong, noting that in the beginning of Bush’s speech, he declared, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” He called the “battle of Iraq” a “victory.” In his radio address shortly after the speech, he boasted, “I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” Bush even wanted to use the mission-accomplished phrase specifically, but Rumsfeld talked the White House out of it.
You can call that many things, but “just the opposite” of “Mission Accomplished” isn’t one of them.
I wanted to add a bit to the Think Progress piece, however, specifically on the White House argument that the “Mission Accomplished” banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln. The Bush gang has been trying to reinvent history on this one for a long while, but they’ve been wrong every step of the way.
Just four months after the infamous speech, Bush said, “The ‘Mission Accomplished’ sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff.”
Because it was. Two weeks after the event on the USS Lincoln, the New York Times explained that that the White House “embedded” Scott Sforza, Bush’s then-communications deputy, to make all the preparations for the highly-coordinated production. The Times article noted:
Media strategists noted afterward that Mr. Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush’s right shoulder and the “Mission Accomplished” banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call “magic hour light,” which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush.
It was the last well-executed decision the White House has made in Iraq.
When the Bush gang try to pass the banner off as something the troops “put up” on their own, they’re shamelessly denying reality. I don’t blame Bush and his aides for being embarrassed about it now, but the truth, whether they want to admit it or not, is that the White House used that ship and its crew as political props. It was Bush’s strategists’ idea to use that ridiculous (and factually incorrect) banner, not the Navy soldiers’.
Yes, I know this is old news, but as long as the White House continues to repeat their myth, I’m going to keep setting the record straight.