Obama's 'Mission Accomplished' moment

The banner unfurled on the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln,  let the world know that President Bush and the USA had achieved its goal of ending major combat actions in Iraq.  This was May 1, 2003.  The majority of our fighting men and women who died in Iraq died after this pronouncement.

George W. Bush was ostracized by the media, ridiculed by late night comedians and to this day has never lived that moment down.  It was a lesson that future leaders would take note of and do their best not to repeat.

Fast forward to 2012.  President Obama, campaigning for re-election the week before the big vote, (as he had been doing since 2009) spoke to a crowd in Green Bay, Wisconsin. 

“Thanks to sacrifice and service of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.”

Yes, he said that Al Qaeda had been decimated.

This was not the first time since the September Al Qaeda attacks on our US Consulate in Benghazi that the President had talked about the apparent victory over Al Qaeda.  To the contrary, he had brought this up roughly 30 times after the attack.  The attack that he so desperately wanted to be about an anti-Muslim video, but knew was an orchestrated terrorist attack which was planned for the anniversary of 9/11. 

Just weeks before the speech in Green Bay, President Obama debated candidate Mitt Romney on the topic of foreign policy.  Romney was asked about the prospects of terrorism overseas.

"…..Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali by al-Qaeda type individuals. We have in -- in Egypt, a Muslim Brotherhood president. And so what we're seeing is a pretty dramatic reversal in the kind of hopes we had for that region….

…..It's certainly not hiding. This is a group that is now involved in 10 or 12 countries, and it presents an enormous threat to our friends, to the world, to America, long term, and we must have a comprehensive strategy to help reject this kind of extremism….."

The national media ridiculed Romney for bringing up this place that most Americans didn’t care about, let alone had never heard of.

Now we know all about Mali.  We saw Al Qaeda operatives attack a gas plant, assassinate many foreign nationals, including Americans, and kidnap others.

This was not about an anti-Muslim video.  This was not to be unexpected, as Mitt Romney talked about Mali being a powder-keg just months earlier.  This was Al Qaeda continuing their jihadist ways.

Now, how could this be so?

Didn’t President Obama say, during his perpetual campaigning, that Al Qaeda had been..in his own words ‘decimated’?  If so, then how can they continue to kill innocent American abroad?

The bigger question is “when will the mainstream media ask Obama the tough questions about these killings?"  When will they hold his feet to the fire over his bragging about his role in the ‘decimation’ of Al Qaeda?

When will the media connect the dots and admit that this is Obama’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment?