Remember "Mission Accomplished"?

See this Media Matters review of the really appalling slobbering US media this date five years ago when the person acting as President declared "Mission Accomplished!" in Iraq. Then ask yourself this: Do you feel safer when major mainstream reporters treat government pronouncements with routine skepticism and a demanding "show me" attitude, or when they fall all over themselves to throw rosebuds in the path of one party and stones in the path of the other?

Someone named McCain opined that the person acting as President shouldn't be held responsible for the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Why not?

Nobody made him stand in front of it. Nobody made him utter precisely synonymous words: "The US and its allies prevailed." Nobody made his front men hang that banner, or planned the whole thing to serve as re-election fodder the next go-round. But since he did and they did, they can't have it both ways. McNutz knows that. He just lacks the integrity to admit it. So much for "straight talk."

I like to imagine a real President who, seeing such a disgusting spectacle, knowing full well that the deal was far from done, would have stopped the press conference, asked that the banner be struck, and told the world the truth right then and there.
Almost inconceivable, isn't it? That's how far we've come from the likes of Lincoln.