Welcome to the best of the left podcast for clips today from Rachel Maddo, CounterSpin,

P.R. and Slate Magazine.

Six years ago, our war against the country that attacked us on 9-11 ended, and American

troops started to come home. At least, that's the impression you would get. If you went

back and read George Bush's infamous Mission Accomplished speech, which our friend Keith

Overman still uses as a benchmark in time to sign off his show every night. Although

the Bush White House initially blamed the Mission Accomplished banner on the sailors

of the USS Abraham Lincoln themselves, the speech itself gives lie to that lie. It

makes clear that the whole point of the event, banner or no, was to take a victory lap.

The major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States

and our allies have prevailed. America is grateful for a job well done. Americans, following

a battle, want nothing more than to return home. And that is your direction tonight.

You are Homeward Bound. You are Homeward Bound, Homeward Bound. It's actually six years

later how many deployments have those troops seen since. Looking back on the anniversary

of the Mission Accomplished speech, everything from the promise that the troops were coming

home to the flight suit, shredding to the blatantly untrue swaggering statements about what

the war was for, make it seem like it's of another era, like it's a caricature of the

Bush presidency.

We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th, the last phone calls, the cold

murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their

supporters declared war on the United States, and war is what they got.

Actually, what they got was an inexplicable war on a totally unrelated country in the

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