The banner may not have been Bush’s idea but he opened his speech by saying.
[quote=“Bush”]Thank you. Thank you all very much.
Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
[/quote]
[quote=“cfimages”][quote=“Tigerman”]
For the record, the Mission Accomplished banner was not Bush’s idea, and it did not signal an end to major combat in Iraq. It merely signalled an end to the specific mission of the crew and ship on which Bush gave that particular speech.
[/quote]
The banner may not have been Bush’s idea but he opened his speech by saying.
[quote=“Bush”]Thank you. Thank you all very much.
Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
[/quote][/quote]
He was right about that being the end of major combat operations.
Although the majority of lives were lost afterward, they were lost in dealing with the guerrilla war carried out by various factions in Iraq rather than the major combat operations that was the invasion.
Bush also stated in that speech the following:
Our mission continues is pretty much the opposite of Mission Accomplished.
Wiki states the following re the banner:
Thus, I reiterate, again, that lefties have been lying about the whole Mission Accomplished matter for a long time.
The post of yours I quoted, you said
Now you say
So was it an end or was it not? 
Our mission continues etc - the full paragraph is
That’s clearly not talking about the Iraq war but the wider fight against AQ.
[quote=“cfimages”]The post of yours I quoted, you said
Now you say
So was it an end or was it not? [/quote]
It refers to the Mission Accomplished banner.
Thus, I am right about both statements.
And not just AQ, but the entire reform of the MENA region.
But, again, the Mission Accomplished banner referred to the crew of the ship and not to the work in Iraq, and Bush clearly stated only that major combat operations in Iraq has ended.
He was correct.
The banner itself was a White House production. It was all arranged by the pres’s advance staging team. The only thing the navy had to do with it was the physical hanging of it. The speech originally had the phrase mission accomplished in it, and according to Sec Rumsfeld, the two went hand-in-hand. He has stated that the sign was not about the deployment of the ship but a part of Bush’s speech.
That is not correct. From Wiki:
Have a cite for that?
In any event, if the speech originally did have a reference to mission accomplished, it could only have referred to major combat operations or the deployment of the ship/crew. This is clear because Bush also stated that there was much work to be done in Iraq and that efforts to secure certain areas of Iraq were on-going.
There are lots of areas/aspects of the Iraq invasion and subsequent actions to criticize. Lefties should not need to misrepresent/lie about the Mission Accomplished banner to score points in this regard.
That is not correct. From Wiki:
Which they later backtracked from once it became clear they were lying to cover their asses.
content.time.com/time/nation/art … 70,00.html
Have a cite for that?
In any event, if the speech originally did have a reference to mission accomplished, it could only have referred to major combat operations or the deployment of the ship/crew. This is clear because Bush also stated that there was much work to be done in Iraq and that efforts to secure certain areas of Iraq were on-going.
There are lots of areas/aspects of the Iraq invasion and subsequent actions to criticize. Lefties should not need to misrepresent/lie about the Mission Accomplished banner to score points in this regard.[/quote]
First mentioned in a Bob Woodward interview with Rumsfeld, and then various follow-ups.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 02138.html
The only lies about Mission Accomplished are the ones that came from the White House.
FWIW, I don’t blame the WH for lying. It’s par for the course regardless of who is in power. Bush lied, Obama lied, whoever comes next will lie.
At least the flight suit was a White House idea. As far as ‘major combat operations’ in Iraq having ended goes, when Bush made that statement 170 U. S. soldiers had been killed in combat in Iraq. Almost 5,000 were eventually killed and tens of thousands wounded before Bush was run out of Iraq by a hail of flying shoes.
That never became clear. I believe in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, even 0bama. If you are going to accuse someone of lying, you had better have very solid evidence of intent to mislead. Given the clear and unambiguous content of Bush’s speech that day, there is no clear evidence of intent to mislead.
From the cite you posted:
[quote]Bush never actually used the words “mission accomplished” that day, and the White House has long argued that although it created the banner, it did so only in response to a request by the ship to indicate that its long deployment was over and not to indicate that the mission in Iraq was complete. But that explanation has been undermined by none other than Rumsfeld, who was in charge of the Pentagon at the time.
In a little-noticed interview with The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward published last year in Woodward’s book “State of Denial,” Rumsfeld said the phrase “mission accomplished” was not about the ship’s deployment but in fact was a White House message originally included in Bush’s speech. “I took ‘Mission Accomplished’ out,” Rumsfeld said. “I was in Baghdad and I was given a draft of that thing and I just died. And I said, it’s too inclusive. And I fixed it and sent it back. They fixed the speech but not the sign.”
This week, for the first time, the White House publicly disagreed. “It’s not true,” said Dan Bartlett, the president’s counselor, who helped organize the Abraham Lincoln event. "I think he’s gotten confused. There was discussion about how to phrase the end of major combat operations" but not whether to say “mission accomplished.”
After Woodward’s book came out, Bartlett said, he went back to the files. “I looked at every draft of the speech, every draft that was sent to the principals, the Cabinet secretaries,” he said. “There was never ‘mission accomplished’ in any draft of the speech.” Rumsfeld could not be reached for comment…[/quote]
That never became clear. I believe in giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, even 0bama. If you are going to accuse someone of lying, you had better have very solid evidence of intent to mislead. Given the clear and unambiguous content of Bush’s speech that day, there is no clear evidence of intent to mislead.[/quote]
They changed their story 3 times. What else would you call it?
From the cite you posted:
[quote]Bush never actually used the words “mission accomplished” that day, and the White House has long argued that although it created the banner, it did so only in response to a request by the ship to indicate that its long deployment was over and not to indicate that the mission in Iraq was complete. But that explanation has been undermined by none other than Rumsfeld, who was in charge of the Pentagon at the time.
In a little-noticed interview with The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward published last year in Woodward’s book “State of Denial,” Rumsfeld said the phrase “mission accomplished” was not about the ship’s deployment but in fact was a White House message originally included in Bush’s speech. “I took ‘Mission Accomplished’ out,” Rumsfeld said. “I was in Baghdad and I was given a draft of that thing and I just died. And I said, it’s too inclusive. And I fixed it and sent it back. They fixed the speech but not the sign.”
This week, for the first time, the White House publicly disagreed. “It’s not true,” said Dan Bartlett, the president’s counselor, who helped organize the Abraham Lincoln event. "I think he’s gotten confused. There was discussion about how to phrase the end of major combat operations" but not whether to say “mission accomplished.”
After Woodward’s book came out, Bartlett said, he went back to the files. “I looked at every draft of the speech, every draft that was sent to the principals, the Cabinet secretaries,” he said. “There was never ‘mission accomplished’ in any draft of the speech.” Rumsfeld could not be reached for comment…[/quote][/quote]
Someone caught in a lie, by a close associate no less, needs to offer more than just a denial and an attack on the person who showed it to be a lie, for him to be credible.
The king is dead; long live the king. The death of one man solves nothing. It was the regime that needed toppling.
Did you hear? They got Bin Laden… and nothing changed.
One good thing about killing the top guy is it buys us some time until the next top guy gets his legs under him. That means nothing if no leader of the free world has the clarity of vision to follow through afterwards. All Oblamebush can think to do is kick the can down the road a bit and do a victory dance.
AKA “de-Ba’athification”:
Meanwhile the Sunni Awakening AKA the Baathists is planning on sitting this surge out:
[quote]The aging ex-general remembers another era not long ago, when American military commanders would visit him at his compound and sip tea as they sat on plastic chairs in a tidy garden ringed by date palms.
Back then, Mustafa Kamil Shibib was an important U.S. ally against Al Qaeda in Iraq militants, leading 2,000 Sunni Muslim fighters who helped drive the insurgents out of south Baghdad by 2008 as part of a tribal uprising called the Awakening.
With much of Iraq now besieged by an Al Qaeda splinter group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Shibib is in no hurry to pick up his weapons again. To do so, he said, would be to defend a corrupt government that has cast aside or jailed his former fighters and systematically oppressed his fellow Sunnis.
“If ISIS were to show up here, I would step aside and point them in the direction of the Green Zone,” Shibib said, referring to the former U.S.-run enclave in central Baghdad that is now the seat of the Iraqi government. “If they have any quarrel, they can take it up with them.”
As Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Shiite Muslim-dominated administration loses more and more territory to ISIS-led Sunni insurgents, many former Awakening leaders are staying on the sidelines, saying they won’t fight for a government he leads. Some are quietly striking deals with more moderate factions fighting alongside ISIS, including ones led by former army officers and ex-functionaries of the outlawed Baath Party who once served Saddam Hussein.
Without the support of Awakening fighters — and with U.S.-trained security forces collapsing in the face of the insurgents — Obama administration officials believe that Maliki’s government may not be able to regain lost territory in northern and western Iraq for the foreseeable future.[/quote]
Moving beyond denial to bargaining. Stages of grief for the blame-your-predecessor narrative:
thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- … z3CvwSVwHs
Not looking likely. There are a number of requirements for being greeted as a liberator. One of these is: someone actually has to get liberated.
Chris Matthews has crossed over to the racist side…
realclearpolitics.com/video/ … cient.html
There’s no pleasing some people.
Speaking of “what ally that was” where’s America’s “closest ally” in its hour of need? Surely all that money should be buying more than the usual snubs and backstabbings, particularly since ISIS is operating in its own backyard.
That is not correct. From Wiki:
[/quote]
Wow the White House made it? That strains credibility. The Navy isn’t capable of making a banner, but had to get the White House to help them on it?
In the end, words matter. If they didn’t know what it was gonna mean with Bush standing in front of it, they should have figured it out.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]
Wow the White House made it? That strains credibility. The Navy isn’t capable of making a banner, but had to get the White House to help them on it?
In the end, words matter. If they didn’t know what it was gonna mean with Bush standing in front of it, they should have figured it out.[/quote]
What is so incredible about that? I’m sure that every administration has people that handle political/photo-op matters. Seems perfectly plausible and likely to me.
There’s probably a whole department in the White House whose job it is to make banners for the military.
He’s lost the New York Post:
nypost.com/2014/09/14/obamas-ship-is-sinking/
Well, it’s just a tabloid anyway.
