George's Aircraft Carrier Carnival revisited

"George's Aircraft Carrier Carnival" refers to the "Mission Accomplished" party aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. It is also the title of a very lengthy post about that event. Now I have some follow-up info for that post.

On Wednesday, Bob Woodward was interviewed on Fresh Air. The primary topic was his new book, State of Denial. He discussed info about the Aircraft Carrier Carnival he got from Rumskull, but before showing you that, let's take a brief trip in the wayback machine (you can be either Mr. Peabody or Sherman).

Recall that Bush's speech did not have the words "mission accomplished," but that there was a large banner with that phrase that was in the camera shot most of the time. Bush deservedly caught a lot of grief for that banner, and I discussed the White House explanation at length in the original post of August 26, 2004. Basically, the explanation was that 1) the phrase was not in the speech, 2) the banner was the idea of the Lincoln's crew, 3) the White House did nothing but see that the banner was made--because the crew asked for that, and 4) the White House had nothing to do with the banner being displayed. I said "bullshit" and explained my position in great detail. The summary is that the White House knew about the banner, decided what it would say, decided where it would go, and fully intended that the message to be conveyed was that the war was over. If you want the full story, you will have to read the original post.

Now back to the present...here's what Woodward said about George's Aircraft Carrier Carnival:

...the whole business of the “mission Accomplished” speech that the President gave on the aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003...Rumsfeld disclosed and said just openly when he saw the President’s speech it had “mission accomplished” in it, and he said “I almost died. I got it out of the speech, but didn’t get the sign down.” Now the White House has always taken the position that the “Mission Accomplished” sign was put up by the Navy and the military and they (the White House) were not responsible, and here’s Rumsfeld saying it was in the speech. Clearly, the White House had total responsibility for the speech.

And keep in mind this info came not from some disgruntled former insider with a political agenda of revenge, but from a member of the past and current cabal, Rumskull.