Irony

Today is the fifth anniversary of Commander Cuckoo Banana’s now infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the deck of the Lincoln. The take from the Beeb:

President Bush did not say "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego on 1 May five years ago. But the banner above him did.

And the picture of those two words said more than the 1,829 words of his speech.

What the president said, among a lot of other things, was: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."

But the message from the banner said it simpler - mission accomplished. It was all over.

It wasn't. Guerrilla war followed, and this has produced more US casualties than the "major combat operations" did.

The phrase "mission accomplished" has lost that distinctive military ring of finality that it once had. It has become an irony.

Hubris, incompetence, lack of integrity, and a healthy disregard for the obvious are the hallmarks of the Bush Administration. If one had to choose a moment in this reign of error that encapsulated those qualities, the banner debacle would certainly be among the most appropriate if not ironic as well.