This rhetorical head fake of Teresita’s — that George Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, 2003 — reminds me of why I grew to loath the MSM for their arrogance and condescension. For a week before the speech on the Aircraft Carrier, they kept asking the President, “Are you going to declare the war over?” They asked this question numerous times of themselves and everyone in the Administration. I saw one interview with Bush where they would ask the question, he would refuse to declare “the war over,” and they would come back to it. Utter Bull. I knew exactly what the MSM Hive was up to. Get George Bush to say the war is over and with the first American that died in Iraq — and every American thereafter — they would say “George Bush said the war was over!”

If he refused to say the war was over, they’d accuse him of needlessly prolonging the war to squeeze more innocent blood out the barbarous and futile exercise (which the “All Wise” of the MSM hive had already declared it). Endless war it was! But the “was” was an MSM rhetorical trap.

Declaring an end to “Major Combat Operations” was a way out of the trap. The fact that five years later Teresita brings it up shows exactly what they were aiming at: turning the military victory for the nation — the removal of the Baathist regime from power — into a political defeat for the President, as they repeated “The President said the war was over!” endlessly.

Now, five years later, Teresita brings up that speech. Imagine if the MSM had got its way? She would be saying, “the President said this war was over and victory secured on May 1, 2003.”

Remember, our military maneuvers and the resulting “ephemeral” victories are unimportant (other than in the lives lost and ruined). It’s the political Left’s rhetorical maneuvers and political triumphs that count, and are remembered. (Mistakes? Forgotten.)