Andrea Mitchell Mocks Bush With 'Mission Accomplished'

May 2nd, 2011 8:44 AM

Commenting on the death of Osama Bin Laden, Rep. Gary Ackerman has gloated: "this is the 'Mission Accomplished' moment President Bush only fantasized about."  Could the Dem from New York have gotten the inspiration for his taunt from Andrea Mitchell?

The question arises because in the run-up to President Obama's announcement last night, Mitchell said something similar, if not quite as pointedly partisan.

Not only did Mitchell throw Mission Accomplished in Pres. Bush's face, she also, for purposes of taking another slap at Pres. Bush, misrepresented the history of Tora Bora.   Mitchell claimed that John Kerry made it a 2004 campaign issue on the basis that OBL could have been killed or captured there "if troops had not been moved to Iraq."  But the Battle of Tora Bora took place in 2001 and the Iraq war didn't start until 2003. Hat tip NB reader Mr. Forward.

View video after the jump.



Watch Mitchell make like a hack Dem partisan.

 

ANDREA MITCHELL: This became an issue in the campaign of 2004.  John Kerry arguing that [OBL] could have been captured in Tora Bora if troops had not been moved from Afghanistan to Iraq, so that became a big campaign issue.

Another irony: this is the eighth anniversary, May 1st, of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, the appearance by President George W. Bush on the Abraham Lincoln, that declaration, which we know was a premature declaration, became a controversy in itself.  But Mission Accomplished became an iconic phrase in US political policy and political parlance and now this could be President Obama coming out, and without literally saying it, having accomplished it, accomplished the mission that two American presidents tried before to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden.