Former President George W. Bush and members of his administration broke ground on the new George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas earlier this week, but at least one question about the decor remains unanswered: will the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner be put on display?
USA Today reports that the banner is currently sitting in storage, and that no decision has been made on whether or not it will be displayed. The military sent the banner to the archives back in 2005.
Alan Lowe, director of the George W. Bush Library, sent TPM this statement:
The banner is one of the more than 43,000 artifacts in our collection. The Museum will open in 2013 and decisions about what will or what will not be displayed have not been made this far in advance.
Bush spoke under the banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, celebrating the “end” of major combat operations in Iraq. The Navy requested the banner at the time to honor the troops who had served on long deployments. But the banner still created a firestorm of controversy.
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Decision Points! Looking Back At The Bush Years]
Speaking to Matt Lauer in an extensive interview, Bush admitted the banner was “no question” a mistake.
Currently, a design firm is poring over documents and artifacts to determine which items should be put on permanent display.
David Taintor
David Taintor is TPM’s News Editor. He contributes to TPM’s Livewire coverage, among other areas. David is from Chanhassen, Minnesota, where, yes, it gets very cold. Reach him at taintor [at] talkingpointsmemo.com
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