On 6th Anniversary of 'Mission Accomplished' -- How the Media Blew It

On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today Op-Ed, "Relax, Celebrate Victory." The same day, exactly six years ago, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq -- with the now-infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner arrayed behind him in the war's greatest photo op.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a "hero" and boomed, "He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics." He added: "Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."

PBS' Gwen Ifill said Bush was "part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan." On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, "The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a -- on a carrier landing."

Bob Schieffer on CBS said: "As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time." His guest, Joe Klein, responded: "Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me."

Everyone agreed the Democrats and antiwar critics were now on the run.

When Bush's jet landed on an aircraft carrier, American casualties stood at 139 killed and 542 wounded. Now...well, you know. Ironically, three more Americans were reported killed today for the anniversary -- a bad day for 2009, to be sure.

The following (a revised version of a chapter in my 2008 book on Iraq and the media, So Wrong for So Long) looks at how one newspaper -- it happens to be The New York Times -- covered the Bush declaration and its immediate aftermath. One snippet: "The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today."

By Elisabeth Bumiller

WASHINGTON, May 1--President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisors to create the moment.

The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily, and--above all--to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home.

''This is the formalization that tells everybody we're not engaged in combat anymore, we're prepared for getting out,'' a senior administration official said.

***
By Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt

BAGHDAD, May 2--The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.

The United States currently has more than five divisions in Iraq, troops that fought their way into the country and units that were added in an attempt to stabilize it. But the Bush administration is trying to establish a new military structure in which American troops would continue to secure Baghdad while the majority of the forces in Iraq would be from other nations.

Under current planning, there would be three sectors in postwar Iraq. The Americans would keep a division in and around Baghdad; Britain would command a multinational division in the south near Basra; and Poland would command a third division of troops from a variety of nations.

***
By Dexter Filkins and Ian Fisher

BAGHDAD, May 2--The war in Iraq has officially ended, but the momentous task of recreating a new Iraqi nation seems hardly to have begun. Three weeks after Saddam Hussein fell from power, American troops are straining to manage the forces this war has unleashed: the anger, frustration, and competing ambitions of a nation suppressed for three decades.

In a virtual power vacuum, with the relationship between American military and civilian authority seeming ill defined, new political parties, Kurds, and Shiite religious groups are asserting virtual governmental authority in cities and villages across the country, sometimes right under the noses of American soldiers. There is a growing sense among educated Iraqis eager for the American-led transformation of Iraq to work that the Americans may be losing the initiative, that the single-mindedness that won the war is slackening under the delicate task of transforming a military victory into political success.

***
By David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON, May 2--In his speech, Mr. Bush argued that the invasion and liberation of Iraq were part of the American response to the attacks of Sept. 11. He called the tumultuous period since those attacks ''19 months that changed the world,'' and said Mr. Hussein's defeat was a defeat for al-Qaeda and other terrorists as well....

Politically more complex for the administration is the continuing search for chemical and biological weapons, a search that so far has turned up next to nothing. One member of Mr. Bush's war cabinet said that he suspected that Mr. Hussein had not mounted his chemical stockpiles on weapons, but suggested that sooner or later they would be found. Mr. Bush himself said tonight that the United States knew of ''hundreds of sites that will be investigated.''

***
Editorial, May 2

As presidential spectacles go, it would be hard to surpass George Bush's triumphant ''Top Gun'' visit to the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln yesterday off the California coast. President Bush flew out to the giant aircraft carrier dressed in full fighter-pilot regalia as the ''co-pilot'' of a Navy warplane. After a dramatic landing on the compact deck--a new standard for high-risk presidential travel--Mr. Bush mingled with the ship's crew, then later welcomed home thousands of cheering sailors and aviators on the flight deck in a nationally televised address.

The scene will undoubtedly make for a potent campaign commercial next year. For now, though, the point was to declare an end to the combat phase of the war in Iraq and to commit the nation to the reconstruction of that shattered country.

From the moment that Mr. Bush made his intention of invading Iraq clear, the question was never whether American troops would succeed, or whether the regime they toppled would be exposed to the world as a despicable one. The question was, and still is, whether the administration has the patience to rebuild Iraq and set it on a course toward stable, enlightened governance. The chaotic situation in Afghanistan is no billboard for American talent at nation-building. The American administration of postwar Iraq has so far failed to match the efficiency and effectiveness of the military invasion. But as the United States came to the end of one phase of the Iraqi engagement last night, there was still time to do better.

***
Letter to the Editor, May 3

Some unanswered questions remain: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? What evidence makes Iraq ''an ally of al-Qaeda''? Where is Saddam Hussein? Where is Osama bin Laden? Who is next?
Martin Deppe
Chicago

***
By David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON, May 4--With his administration under growing international pressure to find evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed banned weapons, President Bush told reporters today that ''we'll find them,'' but cautioned that it would take some time because, he said, Mr. Hussein spent so many years hiding his stockpiles. Mr. Bush's comments came after his senior aides, in interviews in recent days, had begun to back away from their pre-war claims that Mr. Hussein had an arsenal that was loaded and ready to fire.

They now contend that he developed what they call a ''just in time'' production strategy for his weapons, hiding chemical precursors that could be quickly loaded into empty artillery shells or short-range missiles.

***
Maureen Dowd, column, May 4

The tail hook caught the last cable, jerking the fighter jet from 150 m.p.h. to zero in two seconds. Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.

He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics. Compared to Karl Rove's ''revvin' up your engine'' myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer's movies look like Lizzie McGuire.
This time Maverick didn't just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning.

***
Thomas Friedman, column, May 4

President Bush may have declared the war in Iraq effectively over. But, judging from my own e-mail box--where conservative readers are bombing me for not applauding enough the liberation of Iraq, and liberals for selling out to George Bush--the war over the war still burns on here.

Conservatives now want to use the victory in Iraq to defeat all liberal ideas at home, and to make this war a model for America's relations with the world, while liberals--fearing all that--are still quietly rooting for Mr. Bush to fail.

Greg Mitchell's book on Iraq and the media is "So Wrong for So Long." His new book is "Why Obama Won." He is editor of Editor & Publisher and his Twitter feed is: http://twitter.com/GregMitch

Comments

[Raul Garcia]

I stopped relying on the MSM a long time ago, fortunately there are reputable journalist out there who continue to give you the real scoop such as Eric Margolis.

[hw]

Thank-you for posting this.
It's almost unbelievable to revisit this propaganda.

This is also the anniversary of when I stopped watching the corporate news channels, turned the TV off and started ignoring the mainstream newspapers.

I found real news on the internet.

[dianaw]

The most awful thing about this dissection is that these people still have jobs at the Times or other MSM. Maybe these outlets SHOULD disappear. It's not just the Times. I don't even count Fox, because it's not a legitimate news source, but cable news and major networks were equally complicit in this propaganda fest. The most disgusting image I have of 2003 is of Dan Rather embracing the myth of American success in Iraq and declaiming about how "patriotic" he felt. Mainstream media no longer delivers accurate information to the American public, and they deserve the demise they are facing. Hysteria and misinformation being disseminated over swine flu and possible Obama Supreme Court nominations are recent examples. They are less harmful than peans to a useless war in which thousands of Iraqis and American service people died or were maimed, but they are symptomatic of the sclerotic condition of current mainstream media, both print and visual. I hope that things will be better online, but I'm not convinced. Politico, Huffington, etc. regularly recycle inaccurate or misleading "Gotcha" headlines, followed by speculative articles that are habitually thin on substance or facts.
If discredited writers like Judith Miller, Bumiller, Gordon, et al can still write and sell books and newspaper articles, nothing has yet changed. Despite the speed of information transmission, in print, TV, or the internet, the quality of that information has become completely degraded. Mitchell's article is a cautionary tale of how bad it really is.

[Boyaca]

Some Free Press. Some Joke. No better than Pravda during the days of the Soviet Union.

[LeftRight]

Nah, cause at least Pravda had an excuse for that, since they were owned by the state!

[Freenation]

Richard Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz and all the American Enterprise Institute gang should be sued by both Iraqi people and U.S. military families whose families have been directly or indirectly affected by the war...

All these people started the war for their own selfish agendas and walked away without taking any blame....

sue these people....NOW

[Hawaii5-0]

These articles and news commentators show how many of them are paid shills for the govt. Almost all of them. Few news people were calling to question the reasons for going to war, the false claims for WMD's, the refusal to outline the costs of the war and what the post-war plans were; none. Even in the 7 years since the war started, the MSM has been slow to question the length, causes and costs of this war or to even call Bush to task for his outright lies to the American people. Not to mention all the lives of civilians, lives of US soldiers huge deficits incurred from the costs of this war.

Only Ketih Olbermann has consistently tried to call Bush to task on this war. And John Stewart has pointed out the irony and hypocrisy of both Republicans and Democrats who have supported the war.

[jsgaetano]

There are a few huge problems here.

First and foremost, the people who were "so wrong for so long" are still employed, and still being taken seriously.

Secondly, when the media claims it's going to "get tough"... they mean they are going to get tough against Democrats. That's why we still see the news packed with Republican viewpoints treated as fact. The news media hasn't changed, because they are still pushing any lies the conservatives tell them.

[realpolitic]

It is so funny everybody was ready to pronounce Bush a hero. It was clear from his campaigning that he could not form a coherent thought and he may have won the debates with Al Gore because he dumbed them down so effectively there was little left to say on any topic. He took almost four months off in his first nine months in office until September 11th. Then his team started lying about Iraqi involvement in the September 11th attacks. it was clear from his past Bush would not amount to much as president. He was an indifferent student, did not show up to compete his guard duty and lost his flight certification, ad just about ran every company he was involved in into the ground. Of course, with his dad's friends around he still ended up rich. The Texas governorship and Karl Rove's scourched earth tactics propelled him to the presidency. From there he turned huge budget surpluses into enormous deficits to give his rich friends tax breaks, waged an illegal war of aggression, and just about broke the economy. Anyone care to donate to his presidential library?

[radiclib]

.
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Does anyone have a few hours of video recorded from Fox News Channel that same day six years ago? Wonder how it would look in retrospect.
.
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[jcole]

We don't need to have video of the lie that was fed to us because it's still going on, congress did not do their job and the media did not do their job, so here we are in a war nobody can explan what the hell we went their for,the president said you ether with us are you are against, and the democrats acted like a bunch of little girls swooning over the bad boy, i don't know what the hell president Bush had over the democrats but they folded like you would fold a bed spread.

[JoBangles]

It is good to go back and examine the run up to war, and Bush's photo op aboard the aircraft carrier is the crowning moment for the neo-cons. In retrospect the whole idea of "destroying Iraq in order to save it" from destroying us was pure BS. It was, and it still is the oil boys aim to control the oil of Iraq and secure a military presence in the ME to make sure that the supply was going to continue to western markets.

All the cheap blather about WMD and freeing the poor Iraqi people from the hands of a ruthless dictator was fodder for the masses. Unfortunately, most Americans fell for it. and now after all this time, there still those who defend this monumental blunder. Why? Because they can't bring themselves to believe that the eldest son GHWB could lie to the American people about an issue that was so current in the minds of us all. Plus, it is not in the nature of the conservatives to admit to being wrong - period.

Still, all of this now common knowledge. The question now is what to do about it. We need to to keep Obama and the congress's feet to the fire in order to make sure that this crime is not quietly swept under the rug of time and leave open the door of preemptive war for any and all future presidents to use. Justice demands answers - NOW.

[jcole]

Jo Bangles, that was one of the most thoughtful peice that i have read, the republican and the president want this to go away, and that is wrong, our nation must start to live up to our creed, the rule of law, our nation would not be as strong as it is if not for our laws, other nation look at us and say that we are hypocrites and we have been, now is the time for us to set the country on the path of truth and honor.

[zanzig]

The sad part is that this is not all over now. On another post here yesterday I was incensed to read a poster demand "what about all the WMD that was stockpiled?" as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. You still have some fellow citizens in the twilight zone.

[WilliamP]

"part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan."

Yeah, the crazy religious part of Tom Cruise, and the irresponsible tax-cutting part of Ronald Reagan.

[LeftRight]

Good point, I hadn't caught that!!

[maxgen1]

Both actors!

[Palemoon]

I can honestly say that I didn't fall for any of the lies and ruse's that were going on back then. I actually served in the military and had been to war. My father served in Korea, I in Desert Storm. Both were never really finished. We know a thing or two about how things are in contrast to the horsecrap the media tries to sell us.

Look at the NY Times, used by the govt as a way to sell the war. Judy Miller and Jason Blair, presumably planted by the govt in order to orchestrate all of the cheerleading. Remember the Jessica Lynch lies? That was Jason Blair, look it up if you don't believe me. And everyone now knows Judy was used to sell the war while conservablogger Novak was the attack dog to go after critics like Joe Wilson.

It was an elaborately orchestrated propaganda campaign. How can anyone explain it otherwise?

[jcole]

The whitehouse called the press and gave them a press release or spin and they took it at face value, when president Bush was in office we the American people gave up a lot on lies.

[Barbara Fisher]

I never fell for any of the crap spewed in the run up to the Iraq war, nor did I fall for the "Mission Accomplished" staged event. It was all crap then, and it is still crap now. The media falling all over themselves to call Bush a hero made me want to vomit then and it still gives me stomach cramps now.

I used to be a journalist--and I quit because I saw that news people stopped caring about facts or truth and only wrote what their corporate masters told them to write back during the Reagan era. I left the profession then and never looked back.

And so many of them are so lazy, they wouldn't know how to investigate or fact check to save their own necks.

At any rate--there were plenty of us who knew that Bush and his administration were full of it all along. We are the ones who never voted for him, who wrote our congresspeople and tried to get them to vote against The Patriot Act and our senators to get them to stand in the way of his appointments to the Supreme Court.

Not every American was a sheep during those eight long, dark, years.

[1differentdrummer]

Some people voted for him and you don't think we have an education problem?

[jcole]

If all media outlet are given you the same spin that was given to them from the white house without checking how is the public suppose to know, and i mean all of them went gun ho.

[Gidster]

If all of the media outlets repeat the lie they are fed, even though the facts are in front of their eyes, that's just lazy.

[gurukalehuru]

The media didn't blow it. For 8 long years, they participated in the lie. (see Miller, Judith)

[1differentdrummer]

Exactly, and they still do. Corporations cornering all of the media outlets have done us terrible harm. Who knows what to believe?

[jcole]

AND YOU ARE CORRECT.

[Who Knew Too]

This was the most prime example of the MANY, MANY, MANY, MANY lies the bush administration will long be remembered for telling.

And yes, this was when most Americans first realized that we had lost our once free press. In this dynamic example of the fascism that will forever be reflected in this administration's grasp on Corporation Owned, MSM, history will judge the bush dictatorship as America's lowest points.

It will stand as a glaring example that absolute power in the hands of an unworthy, under-educated, ill-informed man-child was nearly the complete ruin of our once leading nation.

"Mission Accomplished" is an important lesson from which we ALL must learn.

It is now time to break up the corporations who own so much of our information that they can be annexed into the government. This nation will always be in jeopardy as long as our press is owned by those who's fortunes are so heavily tied to making war, fossil fuels, and/or destruction. Or, tied to one political party or the other.......

[Chip W]

I agree. The future of the Fourth Estate is a matter of considerable concern.

[Gidster]

Now they are trying to recoup all of their lost credibility by telling us what the President had for breakfast, and how many times the dog crapped......