Happy Anniversary

As advertised, Democrats sent the Securing Defeat in Iraq Act of 2007 to the President earlier today and as promised the President slam-dunked it, straight into the can:

President George W. Bush on Tuesday defied the Democratic-controlled Congress by vetoing a war-spending bill that set a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Mr Bush had threatened for weeks to reject any legislation including withdrawal dates, which he argued would amount to an admission of defeat.

The Democrats waited for the four-year anniversary of the President's carrier-based "Mission Accomplished" speech in a display of political theatre. Instapundit reviews that component of today's drama in this post:

IT'S THE ANNIVERSARY OF BUSH'S "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" SPEECH, which has lots of lefties chortling.

Er, except that Harry Reid seems to agree, really, with the "end of major combat operations" that Bush was celebrating:

"The military mission has long since been accomplished. The failure has been political. It has been policy. It has been presidential," Reid said in excerpts of the speech released by his office.

At the time of the speech, of course, the complaint from many Democrats was that Bush was generating campaign-commercial footage out of a military triumph that belonged to all Americans, given the wide support for the war. Well, that story has changed, as the many, many Democrats who supported the war try to execute their pivot.

That said, I was one of the relatively few critics of the event back when it took place, and I strongly suspect that the Bush folks wish now that they hadn't done it. Well, live and learn.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey notes that people should pay more attention to what Bush actually said four years ago. Read the whole thing. And note what Hillary Clinton said!


Glenn's comment about the pivot is of course the key point in all of this foolishness.