Ex-Bush spokesman to Trump: I would not have declared ‘mission accomplished’

Former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush Ari Fleischer said on Saturday that he wouldn’t have recommended President Trump declare “mission accomplished” after the recent missile strikes against Syria.

Trump touted the joint missile strikes carried out alongside the U.K. and France against Syria’s chemical weapons facilities in a tweet that ended with the now infamous phrase “mission accomplished.”

Fleischer said on Twitter that he would not have recommended that the president end his tweet with the phrase.

Um…I would have recommended ending this tweet with not those two words. https://t.co/h5Fl7kjea6

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 14, 2018

The phrase became famous after Bush gave a speech in May 2003 on board an aircraft carrier with a banner in the backdrop that read “mission accomplished.”

{mosads}

The speech came after the rapid end of major combat operations in Iraq. The banner seemed premature, however, after the Iraqi insurgency turned the war into a quagmire with larger than expected casualties and costs.

In a series of tweets, Fleischer also said the history behind the banner has largely been misrepresented.

According to Fleischer, the crew on the USS Abraham Lincoln asked if they could fly the banner to celebrate their return home after having taken part in the longest deployment of any ship in Naval history.

After our advance crew boarded the ship in Hawaii days prior to Bush’s landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the Navy crew told us they were returning from the longest deployment of any ship in Naval history. They were proud of what they had done.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 14, 2018

The crew asked the WH staff if it would be ok to hang a banner saying “Mission Accomplished”. We readily agreed. We hung it in an obviously prominent place that also sent a message as Bush spoke to the nation.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 14, 2018

The Bush staff agreed to fly it and “hung it in an obviously prominent place that also sent a message as Bush spoke to the nation”

Fleischer said the banner “was the crew’s message from start to finish” and wasn’t criticized by the press until the insurgency developed later in the year.