Matt Yglesias is trying to ressurect the whole “Bush lied about the mission being accomplished on the carrier” nonsense again, this time misinterpreting a WaPo story:
In an interview with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service given on Thursday and released by the White House yesterday, Bush interrupted the questioner when asked about his announcement on May 1 of, as the journalist put it, “the end of combat operations.”
“Actually, major military operations,” Bush replied. “Because we still have combat operations going on.” Bush added: “It’s a different kind of combat mission, but, nevertheless, it’s combat, just ask the kids that are over there killing and being shot at.”In his May 1 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush declared: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.” The headline on the White House site above Bush’s May 1 speech is “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.”
Yglesias states that the white house is ‘backing off a claim,’ and then types this drivel (you can almost hear him sneering when he typed it):
Ask the kids that are over there, indeed. Well, at least the White House got a lot of good images to use in their campaign literature. See also the fact that the president doesn’t know how many troops are in Afghanistan. He’s not even close. In fact, he’s off by well over 300 percent which is a lot worse than Howard Dean did on his flunked pop quiz. It’s too bad the Republicans aren’t serious about national security.
The reason Matt and others are doing this is because they perceive it as the only antidote to the photos they are terrified of seeing during the ’04 campaign- Bush on the deck of the carrier with the smiling troops. Thus, theywill continue to lie about this issue to taint it. The party of Clinton, indeed. At any rate, here is the debunking of the nonsense Matt and others continue to try to peddle.
