Home
Politics
Bush famously stood on an aircraft carrier under a banner with the phrase "Mission Accomplished" in 2003 - shortly after US forces ousted former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein - and declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
The security situation in Iraq degenerated over subsequent years, prompting the US to send in significantly more troops for a costly occupation that lasted more than a decade.
The banner "came back to bite us months later when the war turned and the insurrection grew" and became a "symbol of what went wrong," Fleischer wrote as part of a series of tweets explaining the historical context.
Bush fielded heavy criticism for the gaffe, and the White House later said the president had been referring to one specific carrier's mission, rather than the entire US mission in Iraq.
Democrat Brian Schatz, a United States senator from Hawaii, wrote on Twitter that he "didn't think I could be shocked by a tweet anymore but 'mission accomplished' was so surprising I had to double check that it was not a spoof."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The security situation in Iraq degenerated over subsequent years, prompting the US to send in significantly more troops for a costly occupation that lasted more than a decade.
The banner "came back to bite us months later when the war turned and the insurrection grew" and became a "symbol of what went wrong," Fleischer wrote as part of a series of tweets explaining the historical context.
Bush fielded heavy criticism for the gaffe, and the White House later said the president had been referring to one specific carrier's mission, rather than the entire US mission in Iraq.
Democrat Brian Schatz, a United States senator from Hawaii, wrote on Twitter that he "didn't think I could be shocked by a tweet anymore but 'mission accomplished' was so surprising I had to double check that it was not a spoof."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
