It’s hard to forget the image. On May 1, Bush was aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln congratulating the troops on a job well done. Above his head was a banner carefully placed to maximize the political benefit of the photo-op. It read: “Mission Accomplished.”
The banner has come up several times in recent months to demonstrate the foolishness of Bush’s May 1 victory lap. With troops dying in Iraq every day, the “mission” is anything but “accomplished.”
But the banner took on a different significance yesterday at a rare Bush press conference — his first since July — in the Rose Garden.
A reporter asked Bush a tough but fair question. “Mr. President, if I may take you back to May 1st when you stood on the USS Lincoln under a huge banner that said, ‘Mission Accomplished.’ At that time you declared major combat operations were over, but since that time there have been over 1,000 wounded, many of them amputees who are recovering at Walter Reed, 217 killed in action since that date. Will you acknowledge now that you were premature in making those remarks?”
Not only was Bush unwilling to make such an acknowledgement, he also wanted to distance himself from the “Mission Accomplished” banner.
“The ‘Mission Accomplished’ sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished,” Bush said. “I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff.”
Bush was lying.
A number of sources were quick to point to a New York Times article published two weeks after the USS Lincoln event, which explains how untrue Bush’s remarks were yesterday (I heard about this first from the Kerry campaign).
The Times explained that the White House “embedded” Scott Sforza, Bush’s communications deputy, to make all the preparations for the highly-coordinated production. The Times article also explained, “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.”
So when Bush tried to pass the banner off as something the troops “put up” on their own, he was shamelessly denying reality. Bush may be embarrassed about it now, but the truth, whether he wants to admit it or not, is that his White House used that ship and its crew for political purposes. It was his strategists’ idea to use that ridiculous (and factually incorrect) banner, not the Navy soldiers’.
In addition to the obvious problem of having the president lie about the source of the banner, Gen. Clark’s campaign reminds us that it’s awfully callous for the commander in chief to try and pin his embarrassment on the very troops he called upon to fight the war.
“Today, President Bush backtracked on his May 1 political photo op on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln by blaming the troops on the aircraft carrier for the declaration of ‘mission accomplished’ in Iraq,” Clark said. “This is wrong, this is irresponsible and this is not leadership.
“Politicizing the mission of those troops in the first place was bad theater, and diminished the office of Commander in Chief — but to now turn his comments on those very troops is outrageous. Instead of trying to blame the sailors and soldiers, the President owes our troops in harm’s way and the American people a plan to bring peace to Iraq and stability to the region.”