On May 1, 2003, “Centcom [Central Command] announced that major combat operations were officially over [in Iraq], and President Bush dressed up in a flight suit to land on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. The White House had arranged for the ship to sport a banner with the words ‘Mission Accomplished’ over the flight deck. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld later asserted that he had been opposed to claiming that the mission was accomplished.”
– Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, Page 188