Regarding the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner - of course no-one, not even Bush, expected that the country-building was complete. But it is true to say that the task was woefully misunderestimated, and we have heard many reports of waste and mismanagement in both the civil and military operations. Worse, when these faults were exposed, the response from the Bush administration was not inspiring.

So I think my point about faux leadership remains. Bush’s demeanour and rhetoric is, and has been, terribly shallow throughout.

He also presided over the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and had to be reminded that he had deployed nuclear missiles to Turkey when the Cuban Missile Crisis started. He also got whipped by Nikita Khruschev in their first meeting in Vienna, and was visibly shaken when he left the meeting. A comparison of Bush with Kennedy is not much use when only the supposed failures of the former are mentioned.

But no-one followed, and all he demonstrated was a kind of faux leadership, epitomised by the charade of his ‘Mission Accomplished’ party on board an aircraft carrier.

I think most Americans took the “Mission” on the banner to mean the initial invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein from power, which was astonishingly successful. I think only the most clueless of commentators would say that Bush thought the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq was accomplished by April 2003.