Mission Accomplished: Year Four

By Scott Horton

Today marks four years after President Bush’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln—just beyond sight of the coastline at San Diego, California. With a prompt from Editor & Publisher, let’s take a look at how our newspaper of record covered the event. Pride of place belongs to Elisabeth Bumiller, whose classic contributions to the literature include a detailed account of Bush’s iPod, essential information on the thread-count of pillowcases for Bush’s pillows, and a confession of how “frightening” it is to ask questions of the President in wartime:

President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisers to create the moment.

The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily and—above all—to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home….

The amazing thing missing in Elisabeth’s hagiographic account is military realities. Indeed, I am tempted to say realities period. Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt:

The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.

The United States currently has more than five divisions in Iraq, troops that fought their way into the country and units that were added in an attempt to stabilize it. But the Bush administration is trying to establish a new military structure in which American troops would continue to secure Baghdad while the majority of the forces in Iraq would be from other nations.

In his speech, Mr. Bush argued that the invasion and liberation of Iraq was part of the American response to the attacks of Sept. 11. He called the tumultuous period since those attacks ''19 months that changed the world,'' and said Mr. Hussein's defeat was a defeat for Al Qaeda and other terrorists as well.

“The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror,” he said. “We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because that regime is no more.” . . .

It’s intriguing. Of all the departments, the editorial page can surely hold its head up—the pieces by Elisabeth Bumiller and Judith Miller are simply embarrassing, and the military correspondents show signs of being spun, but still maintain a modicum of professionalism. Surely, the Times was caught up in the moment when solid journalists would have been a detached outside observer. It’s been a slow four-year recovery for the Times, and though they're still far from living up to their calling, the tenor of their war coverage is greatly improved.