[luvbach1]

The Mission Accomplished banner was for the men and crew of the USS Lincoln, which did accomplish their mission.

I didn't know it applied to the mission of just that ship, but the media always mocked it as applying to the Iraq mission as whole which, when it didn't end with the fall of Saddam, was characterized as a failure, or "mission not accomplished."

[Kaslin]

This is what I always understood, because the USS Abraham Lincoln had just returned from it’s mission.