Reid, Durbin Rip Bush Administration on 'Mission Accomplished' Anniversary

Senate Democrats on Monday observed the three-year anniversary of George W. Bush's disingenuous "mission accomplished" extravaganza in 2003 by ripping the president and his administration on the Senate floor.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) started the day by dramatically reading the names of 16 young Nevadans who have died in Team Bush's Iraq war and calling the day "a sad anniversary of a sorry public relations stunt."

"I mention our troops and these fallen Nevadans for a reason. Today, our country marks an unfortunate anniversary: the 3-year anniversary of President Bush's donning a flight suit to declare 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq," said Reid. "President Bush's dramatic landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln will be marked historically as a public relations stunt gone horribly wrong."

"Since President Bush rendered his judgment of 'Mission Accomplished,' more than 2,200 American military are now dead, about 20,000 have since been wounded, many hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money expended, and now Iraq is engaged in a civil war, the degree of which is unknown and debatable."

Calling Bush's theatrics on the USS Abraham Lincoln a "…metaphor for the Bush White House's misleading and dangerous incompetence," he invoked Bush's primary purpose for pretending to fly a plane onto the deck of the aircraft carrier, which was to announce that "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.''