On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush spoke on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” He said: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
The war went on for years. By the fifth anniversary of the speech, at least 4,061 American service members had died. In January 2009 Bush said: “Clearly, putting ‘Mission Accomplished’ on an aircraft carrier was a mistake.”