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No Mission Accomplished here!

George Bush was quick to declare "Mission Accomplished" early in the Iraq War. We know that that was false and the whole exercise aboard the aircraft carrier a PR stunt.

Greg Mitchell is the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine in New York City. In a piece "A 6th Anniversary Look Back at Media Coverage of 'Mission Accomplished'" he has a most interesting review and assessment of how the media, the NY Times in particular, dealt with the Bush announcement. If the media was to report with some proper analysis and fulfill its role of the Fourth Estate it failed miserably. It's supposed mission of standing between the Executive and the people was certainly not accomplished!

"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.

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."

Read a fascinating piece here.

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