Posted on 05/01/2008 11:27:29 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Republican John McCain says President Bush should not be held responsible for the much-criticized "mission accomplished" banner five years ago, but he should be blamed for bungling the early months of the Iraq war.
Thursday was the fifth anniversary of Bush's dramatic landing on an aircraft carrier where the banner hung. The certain GOP presidential nominee said he thought the banner was a mistake at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
Military. an operational task, usually assigned by a higher headquarters: a mission to bomb the bridge.
“Republican John McCain says President Bush should not be held responsible”
Republicans say Juan McCain is not responsible for defending or apologizing for the President.
STFU, Juan and quit pandering to the liberal media.
It was the President’s photo-op, he’s to blame if it blows up in his face.
What bungling? Name another mission that accomplished so much, in so little time, with so little loss of life.
The MSM would just have found something else to distort and misrepresent.
The only way the morale boosting event could have blown up in President Bush's face is if Saddam Hussein suddenly returned to power (Saddam was later yanked from a dirt hole and hanged by the neck till dead).
The media and the Democrats have had a field day with it for 5 years now. Rightly or wrongly, I'd say it's blown up in his face.
Somehow I think the only way for McCain to win is to completely throw Bush under the bus. If people perceive McCain to be running for Bush’s third term, then he will lose, regardless of who the Democrat candidate is.
Definitely! Get National Geographic's DVD "Inside Shock-n- Awe" and without doubt Mission was Accomplished. And the USS Abraham Lincoln had just returned from it's longest deployment after being involved in "Shock-n- Awe" so it justly deserved the banner "Mission Accomplished."
That depends on your point of view.
The media and the Democrats have been disgracing themselves for 5 years now. I’d say it blew up in their faces.
I am pretty sure that the firing of the Iraqi Military was and still is the single largest blunder of that war. I am a supporter of OIF and always have been but that was just a stupid stupid move by Bremer and by association Rumsfeld and finally the President.
And I recall seeing a posting from someone who had been deployed for several tours on the USS Abraham Lincoln who said the banner really had little or nothing to do with Pres. Bush’s attendance on the carrier. They had in fact displayed the same banner at the end of other Lincoln deployments.
Bush’s actual speech given on the deck of the Lincoln bears reading. He makes it clear that the road ahead is long and difficult probably lasting through several presidencies after his. No way did he think or say that the war was over or even near over.
Since that time we have lost 4,000 lives in five years. While any death is horrible and tragic to the families involved and our nation, this is another amazingly low statistic given modern warfare. In that same time, in the face of deadly oppostion by Islamic JIhadists, a new, free government has been born and tens of millions of people have voted regarding their own constitution, government, and future where they had no say before. IMHO, another unmitigated success, regardless of how the left and the MSM spin it.
At the same time, we have created a fly trap for terrorists where tens of thosuands of them have been killed and their leadership decimated. We are doing so on Iran's doorstep, the leading sponsor of terror in the world and with Afghanistan, have Iran hedged in and surrounded on three sides. More very strong military logic.
My point is simply this...the left and MSM want the mission to fail so they telegraph and project that it has failed, when it has done no such thing, and in fact the exact oppoiste is true.
We've made mistakes...like for example we should have put all of the captured troops into POW camps and then worked them hard for 3-4 years under heavy guard, rebuilding the infrastructure, and we would have reduced the insurgency significantly. But we didn't, we let them go home, and we are defeating the terrorists and the insurgents anyway, albeit at probably greater cost.
I am not sure about that. But I think the biggest blunder of the war was that we fought it too fast. We should have prolonged the battles with maneuvers designed to entrap as many enemy troops as possible and completely wipe them off the face of the earth. We left way too many alive to fight another day and any survivors should have been shell shocked to this day.
Next time no more Mr. Nice Guy.
Exactly! But the media needed to feed the lib-sheep with a one-liner that they could chant over and over like clapping seals so the term "Mission Accomplished" morphed into a falsehood forever distorting history, in the name of feeding the brain dead liberals.
Excellent post!
May 1, 2003
"We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We are pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. "
"The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. And then we will leave — and we will leave behind a free Iraq."
'The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more."
"Our mission continues. Al-Qaida is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations, and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people."
"The war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory. "
Gee John, you mean bringing the fifth largest well-trained army in the world to it knees in three weeks wasn't good enough?
I was aboard a cruiser providing Air Defense for President Bush as he arrived and departed. It was a time of great pride for the Lincoln’s crew (and the other ships in her Strike Group) and the president, as they truly had accomplished their mission with great skill, dedication and personal sacrifice. Every time some idiot tries to twist this event into something it was not, I am disgusted by it.
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