Unlike Bush's "major combat operations are over" address in 2003 (which came to be known as the "mission accomplished" speech), Obama's "the combat mission is over" in 2010 failed to carry conviction — evidence of this President's intelligence, if not his forthrightness.
Meanwhile, rumors of Johnson's imminent departure are everywhere, and last year's pronouncement is starting to look like the business equivalent of George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech.
He recalled former President George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech on May 1, 2003, in which Mr. Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq to be over.
In a speech on Wednesday, the start of the war's sixth year, Mr. Bush was stuck in the Neverland of his "Mission Accomplished" speech.
May: Bush gives his "mission accomplished" speech after landing in a small plane on a US aircraft carrier in the Pacific ocean.
In an echo of his notorious "mission accomplished" speech of May 2003, George Bush yesterday proclaimed the Iraq war a "major strategic victory" in the "war on terror".
— And, of course, the entire war in Iraq if you're measuring from the invasion to President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech.
So the war's supporters, especially inside the Administration, were feeling surprisingly defensive, considering how little time had passed since May 1st, when President Bush had delivered his jaunty shipboard "Mission Accomplished" speech.
An Op-Ed article on Dec. 4 about what President Bush could learn from John F. Kennedy misstated the year of Mr. Bush's "mission accomplished" speech aboard an aircraft carrier.
Last Monday, December 19th, a day after the last U.S. troops officially left Iraq and barely a week after President Obama, with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki standing beside him in Washington, gave his own "mission accomplished" speech, things began to unravel.
