Just today, we learned that nearly half the country has “major concerns” that John McCain is too closely aligned with the Bush administration. Given this, you’d think McCain would start doing a little more to distance himself from the least popular president in modern history.
Instead, he’s defending Bush on the “Mission Accomplished” banner flown five years ago today on the USS Lincoln, saying the president shouldn’t be blamed.
On Thursday, the fifth anniversary of Bush’s dramatic landing on an aircraft carrier where the banner hung, McCain said, “I thought it was wrong at the time.” […]
McCain said he can’t blame Bush for the banner. After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the “Mission Accomplished” phrase referred to the carrier’s crew completing its 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq.
McCain added, “Do I blame him for that specific banner? I can’t.”
A couple of things. First, Bush really was responsible for the banner. It was his White House who “embedded” Bush’s then-communications deputy to make all the preparations for the highly-coordinated photo-op. As we learned years ago, Bush aides positioned the banner “to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot.” It was probably the last well-executed move the Bush White House pulled off in Iraq. I’m not sure who McCain would prefer to blame, but this was the president’s doing.
Second, McCain argued this morning that disapproved of the banner “at the time.” That’s not true — a month after Bush’s speech on the USS Lincoln, McCain appeared on Fox News and said the banner was accurate and “appropriate.”
Finally, and perhaps most embarrassingly, McCain delivered his own Mission-Accomplished-style speech shortly after Bush did.
The Huffington Post reports that on May 22, 2003, three weeks after Bush’s infamous speech, McCain took to the Senate floor to proclaim a “massive victory,” and congratulate the troops for “our victory” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom demonstrated to the world what we saw just 12 years ago. We went to war as the most combat-ready force in the world. The value of that readiness is clear. We won a massive victory in a few weeks, and we did so with very limited loss of American and allied lives. We were able to end aggression with minimum overall loss of life, and we were even able to greatly reduce the civilian casualties of Afghani and Iraqi citizens.
“In order to understand the issues involved, it is necessary to recognize just how difficult it is to achieve the kind of readiness we had during Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Readiness is not solely a matter of funding operations and maintenance at the proper level. It is not only a matter of funding adequate numbers of high quality personnel, or of funding superior weapons and munitions, strategic mobility and propositioning, high operating tempos, realistic levels of training at every level of combat, or of logistics and support capabilities.
“Readiness, in fact, is all of these things and more. A force beings to go hollow the moment it loses its overall mix of combat capabilities in any one critical area. Our technology edge in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been meaningless if we did not have men and women trained to use it. Having the best weapons system platforms in the world would not have given us our victory if we had not had the right command and control facilities, maintenance capabilities, and munitions.”
I have a hunch McCain would just as soon we forget that he said all of this five years ago.