Bush Surprises U.S. Troops With Iraq Trip

Bush Surprises U.S. Troops With Iraq Trip

Back to the President GW Bush Page

Nov 27, 4:16 PM (ET)

By TERENCE HUNT

(AP) President Bush puts his arms around a soldier during a surprise visit to the troops at Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - President Bush flew to Iraq under extraordinary secrecy and security Thursday to spend Thanksgiving with U.S. troops and thank them for "defending the American people from danger."

The unannounced visit brought wild cheers from battle-worn soldiers, stunned the nation and even surprised some in the president's own family, who had been expecting him at the Thanksgiving table at his Crawford, Texas ranch.

Bush, the first U.S. president to visit Iraq, promised that insurgents testing America's commitment will not be rewarded with a U.S. retreat.

"We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost of casualties, defeat a ruthless dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins," Bush told about 600 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne.

(AP) Iraqi Council President Jalal Talabani puts on a U.S Army cap before President Bush arrives to...

The troops had been told only that they were gathered for Thanksgiving dinner with a VIP guest in the mess hall at Baghdad International Airport.

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, added his own drama to the surprise. Billed as the special guest along with coalition forces commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Bremer opened the program by telling the soldiers it was time to read the president's Thanksgiving proclamation.

(AP) President Bush addresses the troops during a surprise visit to the troops at Baghdad International...

He asked if there was "anybody back there more senior than us" to read the president's words. Bush emerged from behind a curtain as cheering soldiers climbed on chairs and tables to yell their approval.

The president shed a few tears.

"I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere," he joked. "Thanks for inviting me to dinner."

Wearing an exercise jacket with a 1st Armored Division patch, Bush then worked the entire room and dished out - but did not sit down to eat - sweet potatoes and corn from the chow line.

AP) President Bush waves as he arrives for a surprise visit to troops for Thanksgiving celebrations at..

"Each one of you has answered a great call participating in a historic moment in world history," he said during brief remarks to military personnel spending the holiday in a war zone. "We thank you for your service, we're proud of you, and America stands solidly behind you."

On a day when Americans count blessings, Bush told the troops, "You are defending the American people from danger and we are grateful."

With U.S. forces in Iraq the target of regular, deadly attacks, Bush has been heavily criticized for his policies, particularly from Democrats seeking to turn the issue into a political vulnerability for him in next year's presidential election.

AP) President Bush, center, serves food as he arrives for Thanksgiving celebrations to the U.S..

More than five dozen U.S. troops were killed by hostile fire in November, more than any other month since the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1. Since operations began, nearly 300 U.S. service members have died of hostile action, including 183 since May 1.

The violence persisted Thursday even as the president was en route to Baghdad.

Insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Italian mission in the city, damaging the building but causing no injuries, the U.S. military said. Also, a U.S. military convoy came under attack on the main highway west of Baghdad near the town of Abu Ghraib, witnesses said. And in the northern city of Mosul, unidentified gunmen shot dead an Iraqi police sergeant, said Brig. Gen. Muwaffaq Mohammed.

But Bush, his visit providing striking images of support for him among the troops, told the soldiers their sacrifices are contributing to the safety of their nation.

"You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq so we don't have to face them in our own country," Bush said. "You're defeating Saddam's henchmen so that the people of Iraq can live in peace and freedom."

In turn, soldiers spoke enthusiastically about the president. "He's got to win in '04. No one else can prosecute this war like he can," said Capt. John Morrison of Butler County, Pa.

During his 2 1/2 hours on the ground, Bush also met with four members of the Iraqi Governing Coalition, Baghdad's mayor and city council, and with top U.S. commanders.

As he traveled back toward Crawford, Bush was calling soldiers recovering at military hospitals from wounds suffered in Iraq.

When Bush's father visited U.S. troops at a desert outpost in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving Day 1990, in the runup to the first Gulf War, he became the first U.S. president to visit a front-line area since President Nixon went to Vietnam in 1969.

Dwight David Eisenhower, as president-elect, visited Korean battle fronts in December 1952 and President Lyndon Johnson made two wartime trips to Vietnam.

Bush first raised the prospect of visiting Iraq for Thanksgiving five or six weeks ago, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said. After ordering the planning to proceed during his trip to Asia last month, Bush made the final decision to go on Wednesday, after a secure video conference call from his ranch with Vice President Dick Cheney, chief of staff Andrew Card and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

White House officials went to extraordinary lengths to keep the trip a secret, fearing its disclosure would prompt terrorist attempts to kill him.

In a ruse staged in the name of security, White House deputy press secretary Claire Buchan put out word Wednesday - unknowingly, she said later - that Bush would be spending Thanksgiving in Texas with his wife, Laura, his parents and other family members. She even announced the dinner menu.

Only a handful of the president's top aides knew about the trip beforehand. Even the president's parents were not told until they arrived at the ranch Thursday morning expecting to see their son for the Thanksgiving meal they would end up eating without him.

Instead, Bush had quietly slipped away from his home on Wednesday evening, in an unmarked vehicle and wearing a ballcap. He flew to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington accompanied from Texas by two reporters and a few photographers summoned only hours before. There, he picked up a few aides and some more reporters sworn to secrecy, and made the switch to another plane inside a huge hangar for the long flight.

It was evening in Baghdad when the president's plane - which had flown the whole trip with its lights darkened and window blinds closed - landed under a crescent moon.

Even then, the news of Bush's trip was not released until he was in the air on the way back to the United States.

"If this breaks while we're in the air we're turning around," Bartlett had told reporters.

It didn't.

Some Understand Covert Journey; Others Fear Bad Precedent

washingtonpost.com

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A44

Although the White House lied to much of the press to conceal President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, many journalists and analysts yesterday were willing to give the administration a pass.

"In this case, it's justified," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent. "It was extremely important for the president to demonstrate that he's willing to go where those young men and women he sent over there have gone." If the reporters "were going with a military operation in Baghdad, they'd keep it off the record."

But Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable." (Bob's Note: Yeah NY Times, use a derogatory term to describe something you would have praised if it had been done by a Clinton Criminal.)

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause." (Bob's Note: "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth." is a load of crap. NOBODY LIES MORE THAN LEFT-WING DICTATOR-LOVING DEMOCRAP-ASS-KISSING MASS-MEDIA 'REPORTERS'....except for the DEMOCRAPIC politicians they serve.)

The deception was so complete that White House officials had not only said the president would be spending the holiday in Crawford, Tex., but they also announced a free-range turkey menu. The Associated Press carried a report Wednesday, based on a "senior administration official," that while in Crawford, "President Bush will spend part of his Thanksgiving Day calling soldiers to express his and the nation's gratitude for their service in Iraq."

Although journalists routinely keep secret details of military operations, as they did during the war in Iraq, it is highly unusual for them not to reveal a major presidential trip overseas.

Former White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, who worked for President Bill Clinton, said: "There's no way to do this kind of trip if it's broadcast in advance, for security reasons. My problem with this is not that he misled the press. This is a president who has been unwilling to provide his presence to the families who have suffered but thinks nothing of flying to Baghdad to use the troops there as a prop." (Bob's Note: This guy is full of crap too. Who was it visiting the families of the dead after 9-11? Typical Clinton Crimial liar. Hey Joe Brown-nose, your hero Bill Clinton was getting Blow Jobs from Monica when he could have prevented 3,000 people from dying in the Trade Towers, you asshole!)

But Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, called the trip "a political masterstroke," saying: "This wasn't lying about an 18-minute gap on a tape or lying under oath. If they had announced the trip and there were attacks and people had died, everyone would be screaming bloody murder about how Bush put people in harm's way. I'm sure the press corps has their dresses over their head about it, but I sincerely doubt anyone in the real America will have any concern about it whatsoever."

Rosenstiel, however, said the trip "was much bigger news on a slow news day if it was unexpected. What reporters have done by going along with this is to help Bush politically." (Bob's Note: This guy hates GW and wants to strangle him for doing something so hard to spin as visiting the troops during a war.)

The 13 pool correspondents summoned for the trip included Jim Angle of Fox News, the AP's Terence Hunt, Mike Allen of The Washington Post, Richard Keil of Bloomberg News, a Reuters reporter and photographers from Time, Newsweek and three wire services.

The White House uses a rotating system for a pool that includes newspaper, wire-service and television reporters when the president travels, but even news executives were uncertain yesterday whether the standard procedures had been followed.

Mike Abramowitz, The Post's national editor, said Allen did not tell his editors of the Baghdad trip in advance. "I'm glad Mike was on the plane. He had a great file," Abramowitz said. But, he added, "I am concerned that no one on the desk knew where a White House reporter was."

Kim Hume, Fox's Washington bureau chief, who knew that Angle was going, said White House officials "obviously made a decision that this was more important than the flak they were going to take from it." She said the administration took a network pool crew, as it was supposed to, and "we didn't get any competitive advantage from it." Had more journalists been told, Hume said, "the story would have leaked in about two seconds" because "news people are the biggest gossips alive."

Kathryn Kross, CNN's Washington bureau chief, said a two-person crew from her network was dismissed from the White House pool Wednesday, with the understanding that no further news would be made. "We're all for the president boosting the troops however the White House feels is appropriate," she said. "But apparently the White House put together its own group of people to accompany the president on this trip, and we're real interested to learn their reasons for doing that."

The surprise visit produced upbeat, sometimes gushing coverage on the cable networks, which kept rerunning video of Bush with a turkey platter and his pep talk to the troops. "This is a show of power. . . . This has significance in terms of showing the power of the presidency," Fox anchor David Asman said.

Time's Vivian Walt said on CNN that "an electric shock went through the room" and that for Bush, crying and trembling, it was "a taste of victory."

The message, retired Col. Ken Allard said on MSNBC, is that "you underestimate George Bush at your peril. It was a gutsy call, a Hail Mary pass, and he pulled it off."

Past official deceptions have tended to involve military matters. In 1983, then-White House spokesman Larry Speakes told a reporter a day before the United States invaded Grenada that the idea was "preposterous."

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company