Bushs
PR Stunt In Baghdad Underscores US Crisis
By Patrick Martin
World
Socialist Web
29 November 2003
President
Bushs Thanksgiving Day visit to US troops in Baghdad, organized
by the White House to shore up crumbling public support for the occupation
of Iraq, only confirms the deepening crisis of the administration.
Political aides
such as Karl Rove engineered the public relations stunt, hoping the
televised images of cheering troops and the president serving out turkey
dinners would boost Bushs standing in the polls. But the circumstances
of the trip, with Bush stealing in and out of Baghdad like a thief in
the night, only demonstrate the fragility of the US grip on the occupied
country.
Bush told his audience
of 600 soldiers at Baghdad International Airport that his government
would not retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.
But the security measures taken for the trip suggest that the armed
opposition to US control of Iraq is far more substantial than a handful
of terrorists or Saddam Hussein loyalists.
Air Force One flew
into Baghdad under conditions of secrecy so total that air traffic controllers
at the airport did not know the identity of the plane. Bush was taken
from his ranch in Crawford, Texas in an unmarked car, and Air Force
One flew under a false call signal, with its lights off and escorted
by US jet fighters. Bush spent 27 hours in the air in order to spend
only two-and-a-half hours on the ground in Iraq.
The siege mentality
of the administration is shown by the restrictions imposed on the handful
of reporters and cameramen who accompanied the president. They were
notified in face-to-face conversations less than two hours before Bush
left his ranch, and not allowed to notify their editors or their families
that they were leaving. Bush communications chief Dan Bartlett told
them that if word of the trip leaked out, the plane would be turned
around.
No reporting of
Bushs appearance in Baghdad was permitted until after Air Force
One had left Iraq for its return trip to Washington.
There is no doubt
that the extraordinary security was exaggerated for effectto convey
the impression that the president was exhibiting personal courage and
sharing danger with the troops. Nevertheless, it indicates that the
US military position in Iraq is far more precarious than Pentagon officials
have suggested.
US officials claim
that the security situation is improving, and that armed resistance
is largely confined to the Sunni Triangle region north and west of Baghdad.
Bushs own itinerary, however, suggests that the US military barely
controls even the perimeter of the Baghdad airport, the headquarters
of the occupation force.
The Washington Post
noted, in its assessment of the trip, that the Iraqi population may
take the image of Bush landing unannounced at night without lights and
not venturing from a heavily fortified military installation as confirmation
that the security situation in Iraq is dire indeed. Bushs entourage
was fitted with ballistic vests, and the plane came in with neither
running lights nor cabin lights, parking on a dark landing strip.
Bushs conduct
was in sharp contrast with previous trips to war zones by American presidentsduring
wars where the US government faced much more formidable enemies than
the supposed remnants plaguing the occupation of Iraq.
Lyndon Johnson visited
American troops twice during the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon once.
While the exact details of presidential travel were cloaked in secrecy,
the trips themselves and the appearances before groups of soldiers were
widely reported. During World War II, Roosevelt attended summits in
Teheran and Yalta, and Truman traveled to Potsdam, in conquered Germany,
without the cloak-and-dagger theatrics of Bushs trip to occupied
Baghdad.
In comments to the
media a few hours after returning from Baghdad, National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice was on the defensive over the circumstances of the
trip. She denied that the tight security demonstrated that the US was
losing ground in the war. Its just not true that nothing
has changed since the invasion of Iraq, she told ABC television.
Most of the
country remains quite stable, she claimed. Obviously, Iraq
is still a dangerous place, and thats no secret to anyone.
Rice admitted that the trip had nearly been cancelled after an incident
last week when a surface-to-air missile hit a DHL cargo plane taking
off from the Baghdad airport.
Bush has been widely
denounced for not attending a single funeral of an American soldier
killed in Iraq, and for the Pentagons policy of blocking media
coverage of the return of the coffins of the dead from the war zone.
In response to such criticism, Bush traveled earlier this week to Fort
Carson, Colorado for a pro-war rally with troops, and visited privately
with the families of five of those killed in the ongoing conflict.
Rice denied that
the trip had been made to rebut suggestions that Bush was indifferent
to the fate of the troops or to bolster his reelection campaign. The
president was concerned about one thing and one thing only, she
said. He wanted to spend time with the troops on Thanksgiving.
She claimed that the decision to go to Baghdad originated out
of the president and the policy side of the White House, but did
not deny that Bushs chief political adviser, Karl Rove, had advance
knowledge of the trip.
Roves hand
is certainly to be seen in the selection of the media that accompanied
Bush to Baghdad. The right-wing, stridently pro-war Fox News was informed
in advance of the trip and Air Force One stopped off in Washington to
pick up a Fox camera crew, the only one permitted to record the event.
According to press
reports, CNNs camera crew was dismissed from the White House pool
Wednesday, told that there would be no further news over the Thanksgiving
holiday. CNN Washington bureau chief Kathryn Kross told the Washington
Post, Were all for the president boosting the troops however
the White House feels is appropriate. But apparently the White House
put together its own group of people to accompany the president on this
trip, and were real interested to learn their reasons for doing
that.
While the television
coverage of the trip was largely gushing, other events in Iraq on Thanksgiving
Day were anything but positive for the long-term prospects of the US
occupation regime.
While Bush was meeting
four members of the Iraqi Governing Council, including the Pentagons
favored stooge, Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, the current
president of the council, Jalal Talabani, was meeting in Najaf with
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The senior Shiite cleric declared his opposition
to the latest Bush administration plan, which calls for carefully vetted
caucuses to be held in Iraqi provinces during the spring, leading to
a constitutional assembly. Sistani insisted that the body drafting a
new constitution be democratically elected, rather than chosen by the
occupation regime.
An aide to Sistani,
Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council, told the press,
Some Iraqis perceive the process as being too rushed to fit the
American presidential elections. Even Chalabi concurred in this
assessment, saying of the US timetable for the constitutional process:
The whole thing was set up so President Bush could come to the
airport in October for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government.
When you work backwards from that, you understand the dates the Americans
were insisting on.
Another incident
demonstrates the brutality of the methods being employed to suppress
the Iraqi resistance. A former Iraqi air defense general, Abed Hamed
Mowhoush, captured October 5, died under American interrogation Wednesday.
Gen. Mowhoush lost consciousness after complaining he didnt feel
well, and was pronounced dead by a military physician. According to
a wire service report, The cause of death and the interrogation
techniques are under investigation.