"LET FREEDOM REIGN!" --Three years ago today

[underpants]

FLASHBACK: Bush Awards Iraqis Their Sovereignty — ‘Let Freedom Reign!’
Three years ago today, the U.S. officially transfered sovereignty to Iraq in a “secretive ceremony” that was moved up two days “to thwart insurgents’ attempts at undermining the transfer.” The AP wrote at the time, “U.S. occupiers…wished them prosperity and handed them a staggering slate of problems — including a lethal insurgency the Americans admit they underestimated.”

Other notable moments from memory lane:

“The Iraqi people have their country back,” President Bush said at a NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey. <…>

Bush, whose Iraq policy has drawn criticism abroad and, more recently, at home, was passed a note from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that put it this way: “Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign.”

Bush wrote “Let freedom reign!” on the note and passed it back, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan.


A few hours later, U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer, who had ruled the country for 14 months, “snuck out of the country” with a goodbye wave. Bremer had reporters photograph him entering the Air Force C-130 pictured above for the ceremony, “but after the Iraqis leave, because of security concerns, gets out of that plane and moves to, I think it was a Gulfstream IV that then flies him out.”

858 U.S. soldiers had been killed in Iraq at that point. As of today, the number is 3,570.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/28/let-freedom-reign/

[Lisa]

1. I thought it was supposed to be "let freedom ring!"

Did he get that quote wrong too? "Fool me once ..."