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Um. They did. The phrase was created by the ships crew as a congratulations for the success of their mission. How about you read the article where it says this?


And Joph. You're correct, to a point. However, I think that what happened was that a camp of people opposed to the war and to Bush in particular choose to interpret the phrase "mission accomplished" to mean something far beyond what it actually meant. Certainly Bush was using this as a photo op type situation (duh!). Certainly he was cashing in on the success of the invasion of Iraq. The real issues come about when asking what that banner meant. For those on the ship, it was specific to their mission in Iraq (longest deployment of a US nuclear powered carrier). For the Bush administration it meant a successful "main combat operations" phase of the war in Iraq. Both of those interpretations have validity.


But what we've seen happen is that the Dean camp popularized an interpretation of the phrase "mission accomplished" that had nothing to do with the ships mission, nor specifically with the invasion "mission" in the war in Iraq. Instead they choose to interpret it to mean "We're done in Iraq and all our soldiers will be coming home by Christmas", and when that didn't happen they held Bush accountable for that "failure".


The main point is that the argument based on the phrase "mission accomplished" on that banner is clearly not the meaning meant by those who wrote the banner, nor the man who stood in front of the banner and gave a speech. This is easily verified by reading a transcript of that speech, where he *clearly* says that we're going to keep our forces in Iraq, and lays down the conditions underwhich our soldiers will come home. To use that event as an argument that Bush promised that our soldiers would be coming home "today" is ridiculous, yet that's entirely the interpretation of "mission accomplished" used by those on the Left.


It's not that the words "mission accomplished" were a lie, but that those claiming it is a lie are refering to the wrong mission. Bush was clearly referring to the invasion of Iraq. He clearly stated that we were going to remain there for quite some time. Saying that he was wrong because we stayed there for quite some time (and are still there) because the banner said "mission accomplished" only makes sense if you ignore the clear meanings provided by those who wrote it and the man who spoke in front of it, and invent your own meaning instead. And that's a fallacious argument IMO.

Ok. Explain to me how the photo op was an embarrasment *without* a group of vocal Liberals re-interpretting the meaning of two words on a banner in the backround? No one else *got* that meaning of "mission accomplished" Joph. If you recall, back at the time Smash made a comment about "mission accomplished" and I (and a bunch of other people) had no clue what he was talking about.


If it was such an obviously incorrect and/or embarrasing mistake made by the Bush administration how come no one noticed until a group of Liberals at moveon.org turned it into some anti-war slogan?

I think its indicative (at this time of the obvious failings in the prosecution of the 'so-called war on Terror') of the thinking of those who are still clinging to their support of bush and his idiotic and delusional foreign policies, that suddenly its 'everyones fault except ours'. Its always a PITA to admit that you were wrong. such a PITA that it is seemingly simpler to keep on backing the losing horse, even tho its been obvious to everyone else for ages that the 'horse' is in fact an ***.

In the quote above, Gbaji seems to believe that the people who were opposed to the war, are the same people who are opposed to Bush. While this maybe true among the politically aware in the USA, I absolutely guarantee that for the rest of us (out here in the world outside the US), that what we opposed was the 'war'. Not Bush, not 'Republicans' and not the chasing down of the terrorists (whoever they were) who planned and executed the 9/11 attacks (of wich everyone (except Bush and his cronies)knew that Iraq had no part.


gbaji goes on to ask


Allow me.

Out here in the 'rest of the world', we didnt have a group of vocal liberals telling us what to think. What we saw was a swaggering President pretending to be a combat pilot, standing in front of a banner wich read "Mission Accomplished", on a gigantic nuclear powered aircraft carrier, wich had just returned from supporting an illegal and doomed to failure, invasion of a third world country that was of no threat to the greatest military superpower on the planet.

Now I cant speak for what you call the vocal Liberal groups in your country saw. but I know what I saw. And heard.

It was triumphalism.

And for you to attempt to claim that it was anything else is laughable.



I would have thought that events over the last few years starting with the sacking of Iraq immediatly after the invasion, to the fact that the might of the US military isn't even able to safeguard its own forces within the Green Zone, should be all anyone needs to know about the over-confident and ill-conceived photo-op(staged to the smallest detail, including the time of day to take advantage of the quality of daylight) on the deck of that ship.

Irrelevant. No one in the public knew what the banner was "intended" for until the administration started back-pedalling and saying "No, that had nothing to do with the speech". Shit, most people in the public probably still don't know."Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."The first one doesn't matter. The second one was absolutely in error since we've lost more men since than we did prior and we have continued to deploy just as many troops and the same batteries of equipment and vehicles as we did prior.

I suppose you could argue that we beat Saddam's regular armies. However, many of those same people continue to attack our troops, blow up our equipment and fire upon our bases. We are unable to draw down troops or send our equipment, air support and armor out of the nation. We are still conducting combat operations using the same facets of the military as we used during the initial invasion. About the only thing we've really backed off on is sending barrages of cruise missiles into Baghdad. Rather than crush the enemy, we've dispersed them, allowed them to reinforce and made them deadlier than they were as a regular military and they continue to attack us.

If you want to call that an end to major combat operations... well, good on ya, I guess. Blame the Democrats. Look, I'm glad that we did what we did as easily as we did. I sure as hell wouldn't have wished it harder for our guys. But are you really stroking yourself over the fact that the most technologically advanced military force in the world managed to roll over a degenerated army suffering under a decade of sanctions?

Edited, May 15th 2007 9:32pm by Jophiel

I'd also like to point out that the actual "invasion" from the day it started (march 20th 2003) to the day GWB declared that "major combat operations in Iraq are over" (May 1st 2003) there were 140 US casualties. That is 140 in 37 days, or a rate of 3.8 per day.

At the 4 year mark (that's 1460 days more or less), the casualty rate was about 3200. That's 2.2 per day.


Just pointing out that the casualty *rate* during the major combat operations has been higher overall the that after his statement on the Lincoln, by a signicant margin in fact. It still had more to do with who we were fighting though, but even when measuring casualties over time we find that fighting was tougher during those major combat operations then it has been since.

No, one would assume it meant that we wouldn't be engaging in major combat operations. We have. We haven't reduced our combat forces at all. We haven't reduced our equipment at all. We haven't reduced reliance upon heavy military vehicles at all. We continue to use those vehicles, enter firefights, kill and be killed.Ah, so it was an arbitrary, meaningless term with no connection to what our combat military would actually be doing for the next three years.

Well, that makes sense then. Can't have a photo-op without empty lip service.

The above post made entirely too much sense, and as such, has no place here!