1115.org

One year ago, on the fourth anniversary of George “Codpiece” Bush’s rightly famous carrier-touchdown “Mission Accomplished” photo op, although Tony Snow was the Press Secretary, it fell to Dana Perino to hold the morning Press Gaggle for the White House press corps.

Which gives us an opportunity to see what, if anything, our Dana has learned over the last year.

Here’s how it went one year ago:

Q Does the President — does the President regret the “mission accomplished” speech?

MS. PERINO: Look, I’ve never heard him describe it that way, absolutely not. Let me just remind everybody, in case you need it, that speech there, I encourage people to read it. The President never said “mission accomplished.” I realize that the banner said “mission accomplished.” That was specific to the mission of that ship. They were supposed to be deployed for six months. They were deployed well beyond that. I think they’d gone to both Iraq and Afghanistan. And that’s what that banner was referring to. But I’m not going to –

Q He did said, “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

MS. PERINO: We did prevail, in terms of toppling the Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein.

She clearly subscribed then to the philosophy that when you speak to the nation’s press on behalf of the President of the U.S. it doesn’t matter if you lie, and if everyone knows you are lying.

Well, time and experience do not seem to have changed her philosophy. Here she was yesterday, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished”. The honor of asking the question fell this year to Helen Thomas (who seems clearly surprised to be called upon):

MS. PERINO: … Helen.

Q Me? How does the President intend to commemorate “Mission Accomplished” after five years of death and destruction?

MS. PERINO: What you’re referring to is the banner that ran — that was aboard the ship five years ago. President Bush –

Q I’m talking about the anniversary tomorrow.

MS. PERINO: Yes, I get — no, I understand. That’s the anniversary of when that banner flew on that ship. President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said “mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission.” And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.

I think what’s important is what the President would — how the President would describe the fight today. It’s been a very tough month in Iraq, but we are taking the fight to the enemy. The President, you heard him say yesterday, believes that fighting terrorists, jihadists, al Qaeda, and the Iranian-backed militias —

But that is not to say she hasn’t learned anything over the last year. The lie seems to roll off more trippingly off her tongue. It’s smoother, more fully-formed somehow. And she’s learned to stick to one lie at a time; notice how she doesn’t say “We did prevail!”

If they’re going to keep putting out the same old tired lie, I guess we are required to keep pointing out that somehow the President clean forgot in his speech to refer to the mission of the ship and to congratulate the crew for accomplishing it. He did, however, drift completely off message and announce — in the most cocky and strutting manner that he’s capable of — that as far as he was concerned we had accomplished our mission in Iraq:

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

Then there was his radio address just two days later:

I delivered good news to the men and women who fought in the cause of freedom: their mission is complete and major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

Five weeks after “that banner flew on that ship”, George had still not tired of trumpeting the “mission accomplished” message:

America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.

Funny how things can come out so completely wrong, sometimes. Even in prepared speeches. Of course, the speechwriters who so embarrassed the president by making him repeatedly say the exact opposite of what he meant were all fired, weren’t they?

Perhaps today La Perino will favor us with her rendition of what the president should have said in his radio address and in Qatar?

(So the President never said “mission accomplished”, did he, Dana?)