A nauseating retrospective assembled by Editor & Publisher:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003578624Back in the Days of 'Mission Accomplished': How One Paper Covered Bush Declaration Four Years Ago
President Bush
By Greg Mitchell
Published: May 01, 2007 10:25 AM ET
NEW YORK Today marks the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s jet landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and his speech declaring major fighting in Iraq over, all in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner.
At the time, it was heralded by much of the mainstream media as a fitting moment of triumph. "He won the war," boomed MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics."
Since then, it has become -- during four more years of death and war -- a symbol of American hubris and setbacks in Iraq. Today it is often lampooned as a tragic “photo op.” Rock singer Neil Young, in a song referencing the event, sings, "History is a cruel judge of overconfidence."
When Bush spoke, the U.S. had 150,000 troops in Iraq; the number now stands at 160,000 or more. American casualties at the time were 139 killed and 542 wounded. A year ago they stood at 2,400 killed and now it's 3,350 dead.
With that in mind, here are excerpts revealing how one newspaper, The New York Times, covered the event and aftermath four years ago. They include this nugget: "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."
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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 advisers 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….
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From published transcript of President Bush's speech on aircraft carrier, May 1:
"The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding.
"And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because that regime is no more.
"In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused, and deliberate, and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
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By Judith Miller
BAGHDAD, May 1 -- Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi opposition leader favored by the Pentagon, says he has raised with President Bush's envoy to Iraq his concern that the United States appears ready to admit senior officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath Party in a transitional government here.
The talks came amid reports of tension between Mr. Chalabi and the American military here. When Mr. Chalabi tried earlier this week to enter a political meeting organized by American officials, ''it took an hour to find the right door,'' his press secretary, Zaab Sethna said. ...
However, it appears that officials in Washington have not resolved what position, if any, Mr. Chalabi should occupy. Mr. Chalabi has strong support from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. However, the State Department and other American officials have reservations.
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