I watched the final Bush press conference this morning, and something was bothering me all day about something he said regarding the “Mission Accomplished” banner. Here is the relevant portion of the press conference:
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q And I’m not trying to play “gotcha,” but I wonder, when you look back over the long arc of your presidency, do you think, in retrospect, that you have made any mistakes? And if so, what is the single biggest mistake that you may have made?
THE PRESIDENT: Gotcha. I have often said that history will look back and determine that which could have been done better, or, you know, mistakes I made. Clearly putting a “Mission Accomplished” on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.
I pretty clearly remember that event, because I was in full-fledged wingnut phase, and I remember cheerleading the landing on the carrier. But something about Bush’s version today just didn’t seem right, and just a couple minutes ago while watching the Colbert Report, it dawned on me- what Bush said today was incompatible with what the administration said back when this happened.
If you remember correctly, when things started to go to shit six months after the Mission Accomplished banner, the administration said it was the Navy’s idea:
The president told reporters the sign was put up by the Navy, not the White House.
“I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff — they weren’t that ingenious, by the way,” the president said Tuesday.
Now his statements are being parsed even further.
Navy and administration sources said that though the banner was the Navy’s idea, the White House actually made it.
***White House spokesman Scott McClellan told CNN that in preparing for the speech, Navy officials on the carrier told Bush aides they wanted a “Mission Accomplished” banner, and the White House agreed to create it.
“We took care of the production of it,” McClellan said. “We have people to do those things. But the Navy actually put it up.”
They later walked back even more:
The perfect photo-op has flopped. Engineered by the most image-conscious White House in history, the carrier landing portrayed Bush as master and commander, an ideal bookend to his spontaneous performance with a bullhorn in the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11. Instead, the hothouse tableau already sharply at odds with the reality in Iraq did even more damage to White House credibility last week. Asked at a news conference whether the “Mission Accomplished” banner had been prematurely boastful, the president backed away from it, saying it had been put up by the sailors and airmen of the Lincoln to celebrate their homecoming after toppling Saddam’s regime.
Not long afterwards, the White House had to amend its account. The soldiers hadn’t put up the sign; the White House had done the hoisting. It had also produced the banner — contrary to what senior White House officials had said for months. In the end, the White House conceded on those details, but declared them mere quibbles. The point was, they said, that the whole thing had been done at the request of the crewmembers. Even that explanation didn’t sit well with some long-time Bush aides. “They (the White House) put up banners at every event that look just like that and we’re supposed to believe that at this one it was the Navy that requested one?” asked a senior administration official. Others remember staffers boasting about how the president had been specifically positioned during his speech so that the banner would be captured in footage of his speech.
And now, today, Bush confirms what some of you knew all along. The Navy had nothing to do with the “Mission Accomplished” banner- it was a complete Bush WH operation.
Joshua Norton
Like we really believed that the aircraft carrier had a complete graphics shop where they could just run up a 20 foot banner. They had a branch of Kinko’s down in the hold maybe.
Everyone knew it was a complete setup. The mighty Wurlitzer was warmed up with their email trees and talking points even before Commander Codpiece touched down.
I can only hope that he felt as foolish as he looked.
DougJ
The mission *was* accomplished, John. Why do you hate the troops? Vuh-vuh-vuhictory.
Is that so hard for you to say?
TenguPhule
DFH win again. Yay.
Fuck.
Comrade Stuck
The same goes for the Valerie Plame fiasco and about a kazillion other things. Pathological liars the whole damn lot. Fuck em! Fuck em all on the Assheep of History!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Funhouse Proverb — If you tell enough different lies about the same event, sooner or later the truth will come out.
ed
Thank goodness the Liberal Media called Bunnypants out on that stunt. Oh, wait…
Gold Star for Robot Boy
So Bush threw the swabbos under the… carrier?
wilfred the shoe thrower
And it was Daddy who drank the hot chocolate, not Santa Claus.
This is why it is necessary to challenge everything on the spot, rather than waiting years to find out the whole thing was farce.
You just can’t take anything on faith anymore, not from any politician, at least. Always assume it’s a self-serving lie and proceed from there. And that goes for all of them.
The Other Steve
I told you so.
BTW, one thing I hope dies with the Obama Presidency and I must say it’s looking good thus far as I’ve yet to see Obama stand up and give a speech with anything but a blue curtain and some US flags behind him.
BACKGROUND BANNERS WITH REINFORCING SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES! Mission Accomplished… Tax Relief for Chickens, whatever. Every time that stupid fuck got up and gave a fucking speech he’d have a god damn George Orwell style banner behind him.
This President hasn’t just been a disaster. He hasn’t just fucked up. This fucker actually had the audacity to insult my intelligence.
Joshua Norton
They weren’t called the Mayberry Machiavellians for nothing.
DRD 1812
Is there really any point in saying anything further about this motherfucker’s tenure in office? It’s time to move forward.
At least until the indictments come down. (Let us pray.)
JenJen
There is this kind-of small part of me that wishes I had been reading you back in full-on Chimperor Wingnut phase, honestly. That period was, for me, the point where I decided the nation had gone bonkers, and also became the point for me where I decided to do something about it and go to Iowa to try to elect John Edwards.
See! It happens to all of us. Neither of us would have liked the other, back then.
Watching the presser today, I immediately thought, "But I coulda sworn your people said the Navy created that banner in one of those increasingly-common on-ship Kinko’s and it was all their fault and that the Navy sucks, or something like that."
What an eight years, eh? I really am starting to get a little nostalgic for all the crazaaay-eeeeee. In the best way imaginable, that is.
Martin
Huh. The President lied to us? Didn’t see that coming…
pseudonymous in nc
It was in Standard Bush Backdrop Font, so claiming that the Navy made it was lame. The kerning giveth, etc.
JenJen
Also, I am told by my sweet former-career-military stepfather that, in military jargon, helicopter pilots are commonly referred to as "Helo-Drivers."
So I can only guess Bush was just giving a Commander-In-Chief shout-out to make us DFH’s look like we hate America for not knowing that. Bait taken. Well-played. Chimpy +1.
Brick Oven Bill
As far as I can tell, we have written $8.5 trillion of checks in this ‘bail out’. A Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier costs $5 billion. That means we have just purchased seventeen hundred Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers. I have been on one of these. They are very big and fancy.
I do not recall the last time I have seen a man as broken as President Bush, clinging to the safety blanket of doing good deeds. This one is worse than spending more time with the family.
Barack will be able to blame Bush for somewhere around two years. He is not inheriting Roosevelt’s America. I talked to a very smart man today who has also taken up an interest in agriculture.
A sane America would be establishing tarriffs.
Indylib
Not to defend the Codpiece-in-Chief, but the Navy usually has banners hanging on the flight deck and in the hangar bay when they pull into port. They have them flown in on the on the supply or mail choppers, which would have been coming in at least twice a day for several days that close to their home port. That doesn’t mean that I think the Navy was responsible for the "Mission Accomplished" debacle, I seriously doubt they were, but it wouldn’t have been impossible for the Navy to gotten the banner.
TenguPhule
Yes, it did not end soon enough.
Zuzu's Petals
@Joshua Norton:
The moment I knew it was a complete success was talking to my brother, a real fighter pilot w/two tours in VN, who thought it was the coolest thing ever. What a depressing moment.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
This President hasn’t just been a disaster. He hasn’t just fucked up. This fucker actually had the audacity to insult my intelligence.
Be fair. The majority voted for him in 2004, so the median intelligence of the American voting public must be pretty low. You’re just an outlier.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I can practically hear Dana Purina bleating that when Bush said "we" he meant the Navy because he’s the C-i-C and besides, RealAmerican(TM) presidents shield the brave fighting men and women of the U.S. military from the evil MSM. Also, thought, but!
Sasha
Someday you need to tell us how you got over that. If there is a pill to make you sane, we’d like to know. It could prove useful as we try to paste the Constitution back together.
The Grand Panjandrum
No link to that cup of awesome? You’re going to make us dig through the archives and enjoy it ourselves? This one is poking fun at the "abuse" of our troops (per your senior Senator) but I couldn’t find anything else of interest. (The title of the post is a winner.) I also found these pics of Tunch while he was still in high school and hadn’t bulked up
in the gymat the buffet table before his tryout with the WWE.Josh Hueco
Mission’s been accomplished for over five years and I still haven’t received my bottle of Victory Gin.
harlana pepper
I caught some of the presser this morning. Honestly, I did not see a broken man. Perhaps a little tired, yes, but he’s basically the same guy he was when he went in office: a soulless, cocky, abject failure with a pathological lack of self-reflection or remorse. It was obvious he had his "list" of mistakes made up for him since he got busted years ago the last time somebody asked him the same question and he completely froze up. Remember?
Watch how, when he gets tired of answering a question, he just gives the reporter that little condescending, smirky smile that says, "you just don’t get it, here’s how it is, fucker, because I’m the Commander-guy" I saw it this morning, same shit, different day.
Krista
My god, he was trim then, wasn’t he? Handsome kitty. Seeing him so lithe, I’m struck again by his resemblance to a Turkish Van. John, you very well might have a swimming cat on your hands. That’d be one way to get him to lose the pudge.
harlana pepper
Krista – the markings ARE the same, aren’t they? Having once been a Redstater, I am sure John would have the steel testicles necessary to test that theory by plopping Tunch in a local stream and watching what happens, no? :)
Betty Cracker
What strikes me about the quote isn’t that he lied about the banner — it’s that he thinks a bad PR stunt is the biggest mistake of his presidency. Jesus God, we’re bogged down in two wars, one a trumped-up affair that’s killed more than 4,000 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis. The country’s international reputation is in the shitter. The economy is the worst it’s been since my grandmother was in grade school. And that fucking banner is his biggest mistake?
TR
At least in "They Live," they had the decency to hide them a little.
John Cole
@The Grand Panjandrum: I actually couldn’t find the link.
Sigh. Poor Oliver. Gone but not forgotten.
@harlana pepper: I have tested the theory when I gave Tunch a bath. I bled for two days.
He is not a Turkish Van.
bago
Hey, what’s a few trillion bucks and a few thousand lives among Americans?
donnah
Exactly right, Betty Cracker. And his sins re: Katrina? He didn’t get there in person on AF One soon enough. Supposedly his confident visage alone would have heartened the drowning victims and made everything all better. Perhaps he could have waved his hand and parted the flood waters. Darn, if only he had gotten there sooner!!!
He is incapable of empathy. He cannot view the world as it really is. Everything he sees is dimmed by his own brilliance. Gag.
r€nato
disappointed he didn’t mention his atrocious "Bring ‘Em On!" remark.
Disappointed but not surprised. False bravado, the enduring hallmark of the American Chickenhawk (Buteo Republicanis).
Philadelphia Eagles Delenda Est. Also.
Laura W
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Well that was a nice midway-through-coffee treat! I’d not ever found those since I don’t search archives under "other" for cat pics.
Oh John…you had an orange and white guy. They are the best. I can’t wait to get another one when the geris move along. I had two when I lived in NM and CO, way back in the mid-90s. Milo and Merlin scanned from a photo. God, do I have the photos of those years.
John Cole
Hey guys- how many of you would pay four million for a night of awkward sex with some knucklehead who has no idea what she is doing in the sack?
Maybe I am just getting old, but what a waste of money.
John Cole
@Laura W: Yes. Oliver was very sweet and very cute, but he ran away/got hit by a care/was eaten by a bear/was adopted by sorority girls.
I tried to domesticate him, but unlike Tunch, Oliver was 6-7 months old when I got him, and just had to be outside. Every morning at 8 am he had to go outside and would sit by the door until I let him out, and then every night when I came home he would be sitting by the door waiting to greet me.
Then, one day when I came home, he was not there.
Porco Rosso
Speaking of subliminal messaging…
Anyone else remember Boxgate?
Good times…
kay
Bush to Musharraf, 2007: "the president should remove his military uniform".
On that, President Bush and I agree.
4tehlulz
@John Cole: You know, for some people, that night in the back seat of mom’s Honda Accord was the highlight of their lives
then Bristol’s pregnancy test came back positive.Though those people don’t have 4 mil lying around to re-enact that evening.
Napoleon
@John Cole:
I don’t believe for a minute she is a virgin. Regardless, it would still be a waste of money, even if I had a billion.
The Grand Panjandrum
@John Cole:
This whole thing sounds like a hoax to me. Now that she’s got the media on the hook she’s just reeling them in.
Laura W
@John Cole: I hate tearing up before I’m done with my MDR of French Roast. So sad. I’ll bet Tunch was confused and depressed for a while.
Merlin (as a tiny kitten) was screaming all night in the alley below my Monterey apt. right before I moved to the SW. He started skulking around my front yard and spent at least one night on the engine under the hood of my old Toyota pick-up. Catching him involved a pillowcase and much blood on my hands. 100% feral till the end (except toward me, of course). His end was sudden and fatal kidney disease. He died quite young, despite heroic attempts to save him with twice-daily subcutaneous fluids, etc.
Milo came from a NM shelter. Went with a friend to help her choose one and she took his last remaining litter mate. How could I leave that baby there alone? Milo’s last year is too sad to post on a board. He truly was my favorite cat of the current tribe. bleh.
TCG
It gets worse because, Rumsfeld has pretty much confirmed this too.
The declaration of "mission accomplished" was in the draft of Bush’s speech for the aircraft carrier.
Rumsfeld removed the "mission accomplished" declaration from the speech. Bush gave the edited speech.
low-tech cyclist
The soldiers hadn’t put up the sign; the White House had done the hoisting. It had also produced the banner — contrary to what senior White House officials had said for months.
I remember that. It had the definite flavor of:
Dave S.
What struck me about the excerpt was that the reporter felt obliged to apologize for asking a "gotcha" question before asking a DIRECT QUESTION, albeit a two-parter. Where’s the gotcha in "Did you make any mistakes?"?!
The past eight years have demonstrated that when Bush was talking about "the soft bigotry of low expectations" he was referring to himself.
NonyNony
@Betty Cracker:
Damn fucking skippy. This knucklehead thinks the "Mission Accomplished" banner was the biggest mistake of his presidency?
Not the stupid and ill-conceived invasion of Iraq that he was declaring victory for and we’re still paying for in lives and money?
Not the stupid and disastrous driving of our economy into the ground so much that instead of talking about a recession we’re talking about the Biggest Financial Crisis Since The Great Depression(tm)?
Not even is overly-stupid and belligerent "Axis of Evil" speech? A hint for future Presidents – don’t crib your speeches from the dialog in old Golden Age comic books. And for the love of Grod, don’t crib your goddamn foreign policy from old Superfriends episodes.
TCG
@Dave S
Now you are just being mean to poor ol’George.
TheHatOnMyCat
It’s only a matter of time before they tell us that the Mission Accomplished sign was put up by anonymous bloggers.
chris mohr
Among the things we can be truly grateful for is that at least the whole mess, foreign policy, economy, etc. blew up visibly and obviously enough while Bush was still in office that the overwhelming majority of the public clearly gets whose administration is responsible for causing the whole massive clusterfuck.
OTHERWISE if Kerry had won in 2004, the seeds of disaster already sown during Bush’s first term might have exploded like kudzu and Kerry would frankly have made a superb figure for GOP propaganda to successfuly transform into the second coming of Jimmy Carter. The dems might not have been able to elect another president during our lifetime, and the GOP just might have pulled off a long congressional reign based on creating a narrow but semi-permanent (meaning a couple of decades long dominance at least) republican congressional and senate majority.
EVEN WORSE: Regarding banners, if by chance Iraq hadn’t turned so visibly and undeniably into a nightmare clusterfuck, we might have seen Bush banners more and more similar to those seen in North Korea: "Thank Our Fearless Wise Leader for Protection and Prosperity of Our People". Actually, the Bush propagandists weren’t all that far from North Korea-style over the top stuff, e.g. remember the book "The Right Man" (or something like that) that argued how fortunate we all were that Bush won in 2000 rather than Gore, because Bush had proven to be exactly the right man to respond to the 9/11 crisis, and Gore was all wrong for that role?
jibeaux
It *is* interesting that he would cite putting up the banner as a bigger failing then, say, not accomplishing the mission.
Does it also seem just a mite wussy to CYA with the Navy? Kind of like blaming your drunk driving accident on the power steering being not as responsive as it could have been?
Comrade Dread
Wait… Bush lied?!?
Who could ever have guessed this?!?
gwangung
What’s more…there are millions of Americans who agree with him.
olivia
I’m mostly a lurker here (think I’ve commented once or twice before) but I’ve been reading a long time and remember you back in those days John … like JenJen above said, it felt like the US had gone crazy. You were so thoughtful though, I couldn’t understand why you didn’t see through their shit. ‘We told you so’-s aren’t worth anything considering all the damage that has been done, but I confess the day(s) you disavowed these cretins was a real positive in the blogworld for me.
Tsulagi
@John Cole:
That would really brand you as a loser. Not only do you have to pay for it, you have to cough up 4mil. Even with Gates-like money to toss that cost/benefit analysis looks pretty sad.
One datapoint that has always shown me jihadis are really stupidassfuckers is their 72-virgin fetish. Start a religion promising an afterlife with 72 hot, imaginative sluts and I’ll be in the front pew.
chris mohr
If you’re a guy, sex with a comely female virgin IS one of the most intense, exhilerating, erotic thrills of your lifetime – PROVIDED you’re still a very young late-adolescent punk yourself, when a huge part of the enjoyment is the sheer sensual and erotic novelty of the whole experience AND you’re getting it for FREE with the enthusiastic, willing inviting consent of your partner. As you begin to move past your early 20s, you begin to head into a zone where the erotic thrill from any potential virgin component of your prospective female sexual partner starts to get a little creepy and becomes substantially more so with each passing year – first, because potential female partners plausibly still possessed with the prerequisite qualification who aren’t too shamefully young and immature for you to be trying to hook up with are getting rarer with each passing year, and even the ones remaining closer to your own age are increasingly likely to harbor some substantial hangups about sex to have stayed virgin. Second, it indicates something troubling about your own maturity and confidence about your own sexuality, experience, and hangups. Third, if you have substantial sexual experience of your own, it’s hypocritical to value virginity in women, in contrast with fealty once you’re in a committed relationship with a woman. Fourth, being willing to actually PAY to deflower a virgin compounds the sickness of any and all of the first three considerations.
Unfortunately, the sex with a virgin thing is something that can be and understandable thrill if you’re still at the proper age and stage yourself with an appropriate willing partner, but if you missed having the experience at the appropriate stage at life – I’m sorry, you missed the boat, and past a certain point there’s no non-sickly pathological way you can regain it, especially by paying for it. That really misses the point in the first place.
Of course, we’re not even talking here about whether the sex is appropriately "safe" and contraceptive-responsible (another important consideration entirely) – but rather under what circumstances having the passion and thrill from an experience is an understandable, normal emotion.
Elroy's Lunch
@John Cole
Perhaps TARP money could be obtained by some deserving suitor to help pay for that special tryst with that young lady. Tax-payer dollars at work, so to speak.
Dave S.
TCG, that excerpt actually reflects much more poorly on the press than the Prez. Simply put, the reporter is apologizing for asking a question during a press conference. Not that I care if I’m mean to Bush or not…
Seth Owen
This episode shows how shamelessly Bush exploits the troops he claims to support.
Undoubtedly the Navy knew that it hadn’t put up the banner, but they couldn’t say anything out of loyalty to their commander in chief.
Rather than return that loyalty by telling the truth, the White House peddled a story that made them look good and the Navy look bad.
Loyalty is supposed to go both ways. If anything the obligation runs stronger down that up — or at least it should.
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
Wow! Tunch sure was a svelte creature back in "ought-three". But then he was, as you suggest, just about the equivalent of a human teenager back then. Shit, I weighed about 120 when I graduated HS, compared to about 160 today. Of course I was also about 5’5" compared to 5’8" today. But I could eat like a horse and never gain an ounce. Man, a large cheese pizza, half a meatball sandwich and 4-16 oz. RC Cola’s were no absolutely no problem. I’d be on pulling down the bedspread on my grave if I tried to eat that in one sitting today.
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
That’s too bad, John. I had a cat that I let out and after living at one particular house for several years she started waiting for me on the ledge of a picket fence a couple doors down…the sun would hit there just the right way in the afternoon for most of the year, so she would sun & snooze. Once I pulled into the driveway and got out of my car she would hear my keys jingle as I would look for my house key and she would come running, because she knew that meant food was soon forthcoming.
The day she stopped coming was very sad. I was, of course, walking around the block jangling my keys and calling her name like some idiot, but I got no response. She was up a bit in years at that point and had suddenly turned quite listless. I was going to take her to the vet at the end of the week to see if she could be helped, but I was pretty sure we were looking at bad news. She probably crawled off to a nice, cool place under a house or something and went to sleep. I think I did the "key-jangle walk" around that block for about a week-and-a-half before I finally gave up. I felt like shit for more than a little while over the whole deal.