A
Thanks Giving Soap Opera
By Phil Reeves
and David Usborne
The
Independent
28 November 2003
George Bush delivered a dramatic Thanksgiving
Day surprise last night by flying, under cover of darkness, into Iraq
on board Air Force One.
Two hundred and
ten days after declaring an end to major combat, President Bush slipped
into the unstable and dangerous Middle Eastern country that his troops
now occupy with the lights on his plane darkened and the windows blacked
out.
The extraordinary
mission no American president has visited a war zone since Richard
Nixon flew to Vietnam in 1969 was clearly calculated to burnish
Mr Bush's image as he prepares for a re-election campaign that will
be overshadowed by violence in Iraq and the rising toll of American
casualties. It was spent with 600 soldiers at a turkey and sweet potato
dinner in a mess hall at Baghdad airport and lasted a mere two and a
half hours.
Yet it was enough
to secure valuable prime-time television coverage on Thanksgiving Day,
featuring pictures of a determined president rallying his troops after
a grim month in which 70 lives have been lost. The operation was surrounded
in extraordinary secrecy, and was known beforehand only to a handful
of the President's closest aides. The White House communications director,
Dan Bartlett, told a group of hand-picked reporters invited on the flight
and sworn to secrecy that "if this breaks while we are in the air,
we're turning around".
Even Laura Bush,
the President's wife, was reportedly kept out of the loop until the
last moment. In a deft stroke of misinformation, the White House had
said that President Bush would be eating Thanksgiving Day dinner at
his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and even released details of the menu.
His parents, George
and Barbara Bush, travelled there expecting to see him. Instead, unknown
even to secret service agents guarding his Texas ranch, Mr Bush flew
back to Washington DC from Texas on Wednesday evening to begin the clandestine
flight to Baghdad.
It was a moment
of extraordinary political theatre as Paul Bremer, the top US official
in Iraq, told troops he had a Thanksgiving message from the President
and that the most "senior" US official among them should be
the one to read it. Turning toward the stage backdrop, Bremer asked:
"Is there anyone back there who's more senior than us?"
Enter Mr Bush. "I
was just looking for a warm meal somewhere thanks for inviting
me to dinner," the President, wearing a coy smile and with tears
in his eyes, told the soldiers.
In spectacular vote-winning
form, he posed with a platter of roast turkey. And for 10 minutes he
dished out mashed potatoes and corn to the the 1st Armoured Division
and the 82nd Airborne Division.
News of the visit
only broke in the US after Air Force One had taken off from Baghdad
and was on its way home. And no sooner was the visit made public in
Baghdad, than the city was shaken by the sounds of conflict repeated
loud explosions, gunfire and ambulance sirens.
The administration
will be hoping that the video images will help erase memories of a not
dissimilar staged event on 1 May in which the President landed on an
American aircraft carrier to announce that the war in Iraq had been
won. As the violence has worsened, that day has come to haunt the White
House. This time, wearing a US army jacket, he told the troops that
America "stands solidly" behind them, and to whoops
of approval that the US military was doing a "fantastic job".
As well as potatoes,
he also served them, and the television cameras, with a portion of his
familiar "war on terror" rhetoric. "You are defeating
the terrorists here in Iraq," he said, "so we don't have to
face them in our own country."
Not that the mere
fact of the President having spent two and a half hours in Iraq is likely
to do anything to change events in Iraq or curb the violence there.
Nearly 300 US services personnel have died in hostile action, 183 of
them since 1 May when Mr Bush declared an end to major combat.
More than 60 US
troops were killed by hostile fire in November, more than any other
month since the end of major combat. But it was a bold and meticulously
orchestrated gesture that will have no political downside. Mr Bush will
also have artfully upstaged Senator Hillary Clinton who is due to visit
the Iraq capital this morning. "You are defending the American
people from danger and we are grateful," he told the soldiers.
The visit came during
a lull in the violence, which may have been linked to the Muslim Eid-al-Fitr
holiday. Some Iraqis were unimpressed. "To hell with Bush,"
said Mohammed al-Jubouri. "He is another Mongol in a line of invaders
who have destroyed Iraq."