Mission Accomplished
Polipundit
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First there was the claim that Bush fed the soldiers in Iraq a <font color=blue>"plastic turkey"<font color=black> at Thanksgiving, which turned out to be a fabrication.
Then the 9/11 commission report and various other documents showed that it was Joe Wilson, not George Bush, who was lying about the <font color=blue>"16 words"<font color=black> statement about Saddam seeking uranium from Africa.
Now Gen. Tommy Franks says the <font color=red>"Mission Accomplished"<font color=black> speech was actually meant to encourage more help from the international community, rather than to mislead the American people, as Bush's opponents have claimed.
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After commanding the operation that toppled Saddam Hussein, Gen. Tommy Franks suggested that President Bush publicly mark an end to major combat in Iraq<font color=black> - an idea that led to the president's politically controversial appearance aboard an aircraft carrier.
Bush's announcement, under a banner that read <font color=red>"Mission Accomplished,"<font color=black> took place just six weeks after the start of the war, generating harsh criticism as being a premature celebration and political grandstanding.
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Franks, who retired a year ago, said he thought a public announcement would send a green light to countries that had balked at joining combat operations but had expressed willingness to join efforts to rebuild Iraq.
"That was not so everyone could have a victory lap,"<font color=black> Franks said in a telephone interview Monday. <font color=red>"We'd been given to believe that once major hostilities were over, we would have lots and lots more help from the international community."
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Franks spoke to newspaper reporters in a conference call to promote his book, <font color=red>"American Soldier."<font color=black> The 590-page book, published by Regan Books, goes on sale Tuesday.
I thought the whole <font color=red>"Mission Accomplished"<font color=black> attack on Bush was intellectually lacking from the beginning and wished Bush had refuted it more vigorously at the time. It is beginning to look, however, like Bush might have done the right thing by ignoring so many of these specious attacks on him. In biding his time, the facts disputing so many of the Democrats' attacks are surfacing closer and closer to the election -- just in time to make his opponents appear to have been wrong so many times that many of their new attacks are bound to be taken with a grain of salt.
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