Mission Accomplished!

That was five years ago.

Look closely. Isn't it just a delicious coincidence that the photographer just happened to be the right place to put dubya's head in line with something curved? Gives our Commander-in-Chief a wonderful, well, halo, does it not?

Just a coincidence, I am sure.

To be sure, much has happened in five years. From CBS:

Five years after that speech, after the meaning of the phrase "mission accomplished" and when is a job truly "done" has been endlessly parsed, and after responsibility for creating and hanging the sign was first denied and later accepted, the White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the banner, with its affirmative message becoming a target of mockery and a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war - a war in which major combat operations are still being waged.

After shifting explanations, the White House eventually said the "Mission Accomplished" phrase referred to the carrier's crew completing their 10-month mission, not the military completing its mission in Iraq.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

"Shifting explanations" I like that. They first lied about where the banner came from and then had to admit it that the White House staff did the deed. From Time:

The perfect photo-op has flopped. Engineered by the most image-conscious White House in history, the carrier landing portrayed Bush as master and commander, an ideal bookend to his spontaneous performance with a bullhorn in the rubble of the World Trade Center after 9/11. Instead, the hothouse tableau already sharply at odds with the reality in Iraq did even more damage to White House credibility last week. Asked at a news conference whether the "Mission Accomplished" banner had been prematurely boastful, the president backed away from it, saying it had been put up by the sailors and airmen of the Lincoln to celebrate their homecoming after toppling Saddam's regime.

Not long afterwards, the White House had to amend its account. The soldiers hadn't put up the sign; the White House had done the hoisting. It had also produced the banner — contrary to what senior White House officials had said for months. In the end, the White House conceded on those details, but declared them mere quibbles. The point was, they said, that the whole thing had been done at the request of the crewmembers. Even that explanation didn't sit well with some long-time Bush aides. "They (the White House) put up banners at every event that look just like that and we're supposed to believe that at this one it was the Navy that requested one?" asked a senior administration official. Others remember staffers boasting about how the president had been specifically positioned during his speech so that the banner would be captured in footage of his speech.

But the real tragedy, of course, is what's happened since dubya declared "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

There were 140 American casualties between the invasion in March and dubya's declaration on the 1st of May. There have been (as of this writing) 4,056 confirmed casualties so far.

By my count, that means that 3,956 American deaths since dubya stood, halo enhanced, on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. As CBS continues:

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed (the true number may never be known, since the Iraqi government does not record tallies of the dead), and millions have been displaced from their homes. And there are currently more U.S. troops in Iraq than there were when the U.S. invaded with a contingent of other coalition forces.

True to form, of course, was Dana Perino's complaint that the media would "play this up" as they do every year.

Hmm, let's see. A horrific blunder by an arrogant administration that leads to the deaths of thousands of American servicemen and women and the White House doesn't want any of the embarrassing stuff to be covered by the media.

Sorry.