Mission Accomplished?

The Liar-in-Chief - Mission Accomplished Edition:

KING: We're back with Bob Woodward. The book "State of Denial." Tell us about Rumsfeld talking about Mission Accomplished banner on the ship.

WOODWARD: This is May 1st, 2003, the very famous speech the president gave on the aircraft carrier, the Kennedy. You know there was that sign, Mission Accomplished. And I asked Rumsfeld about it and said he was -- Rumsfeld was in Baghdad and they sent him an advanced copy of the speech. And he said, I almost died because mission accomplished was in the speech. And he said, I got it out of the speech but I didn't get the sign down. Now they've always put out the story that it was the Navy that put up the sign. And there's the secretary of defense saying it was in the speech.

To refresh your memory, President Bush was roundly criticized during the 2004 election cycle for the May 1, 2003 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, and the way they deflected that criticism was to say that the Navy was behind the banner - that it was the Navy and not the President that was hopelessly naive. Interesting how the armed services always take lumps for the President, eh? Now we know that the whole thing was organized by the Administration. Surprise, surprise.