Bush leaves awe in his Baghdad wake (good read)

Tikrit, Nov. 28 (Reuters): Awesome, courageous, a good move for morale, no way — these were some of the reactions of American soldiers when President George W. Bush flew secretly into Iraq for Thanksgiving yesterday.

“That is absolutely awesome,” said Sergeant Aaron Hildernbrandt, from Claremont, Florida, as he watched news of Bush’s two-and-a-half hour swing-through on television in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.

“I think that shows real personal courage,” said his companion Sergeant Gilbert Nail of Oklahoma, both of whom had just returned from a patrol through Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Bush secretly left his Texas ranch late on Wednesday and flew on Air Force One to Baghdad, where he helped serve Thanksgiving lunch to around 600 soldiers at Baghdad International Airport.

The lightning presidential visit seemed to go some way to dispelling an impression of low morale among US troops in Iraq given by many recent reports.

“I think this is a great move. For him to actually come here and spend time with the troops on the holiday. This is a good move,” said Private Michael Debratta from New York as he manned a checkpoint in central Baghdad.

“This is definitely a good move for morale. It makes us feel better that our leader is actually here on a holiday.”

Bush’s bold visit was kept secret from all but a very small pool of White House reporters who travelled with him on the long flight from the US.

The President, wearing a grey military zip-up top, was welcomed by Paul Bremer, the US-appointed governor of Iraq, and helped serve food to a group of stunned soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and the 1st Armored Division.

They cheered and shouted as Bush, who is the overall commander of US forces, entered the military mess at the airport, and whooped and whistled as he made a short address.

“I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere,” Bush said. “Thanks for inviting me to dinner... I can’t think of a finer group of folks to have Thanksgiving dinner with than you all.”

Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell, the commander of the 1-22 Battalion of the 4th Infantry Division, which is leading the hunt for Saddam around Tikrit, was astonished at Bush’s visit.

“I think that’s great. It sends a strong message from the commander-in-chief that we’re focused on winning. It’s a real morale booster.” The US has more than 130,000 troops in Iraq. In recent months they have faced a deepening insurgency from loyalists of the former regime, who almost daily set off explosions or fire mortars at US positions.

More than 180 US soldiers have been killed since Washington declared an end to major combat on May 1. But despite those losses, soldiers said today’s visit from Bush was just the sort of thing to keep them upbeat.

“It’s a total morale booster,” said Nail in Tikrit. “I didn’t get to see him but what matters is that he cares enough to come and visit.”

Britain’s Times newspaper hailed Bush’s trip as “one of the most daring stunts in modern American history”.

“Probably not since the American Civil War, when battles raged only a few miles from Washington, has the incumbent of the White House deliberately placed himself in so much danger,” the newspaper’s diplomatic editor wrote.

“Election raid on Baghdad,” declared a front-page headline in France’s Left-wing newspaper Liberation, beside a photograph of Bush carrying a platter laden with roast turkey and fruit and surrounded by US troops.

“This ‘Baghdad coup’, primarily intended for the US public, was a brilliantly conceived and executed piece of election propaganda,” the newspaper said.

But opinions on the trip differed in other sections of the press, with Britain’s tabloid Daily Mirror newspaper and The Independent both running a similar photograph of Bush holding a platter with the headline: “The Turkey has landed”.

In Baghdad, discussions were under way on amendments to a new US-backed plan to hand sovereignty back to Iraqis by July, after the Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said the political roadmap paid too little heed to Islam and did not include enough Iraqi involvement.

BEST OF THE WEB TODAY, BY JAMES TARANTO, November 28, 2003

Sour Scribes
The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports that the White House arranged for a pool of 13 reporters to accompany President Bush to Baghdad; the Drudge Report has a copy of the notes filed by Post reporter Mike Allen, who writes: "The [president's] staff aimed to keep the trip secret until after he had taken off from Baghdad--no filing was permitted from the site, by the pool or by locals."

This seems entirely reasonable; the president was taking a risk by landing at Baghdad (né Saddam) International Airport, where less than a week ago a terrorist's surface-to-air missile hit a civilian jet. As 20-year-old Pfc. Telo Monahan tells the Associated Press, Bush's visit "was a display of confidence in our ability to protect not just us, but him. It was just three or four days after that DHL plane got hit."

But some journalists are complaining, Kurtz reports:

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."

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."

Is it any wonder Americans don't trust the press? Here we have an editor of the New York Times insisting that reporters can keep a secret, then in the very next breath, a self-styled rabbi of reportorial "excellence" denounces them for doing just that.

Rosentiel's comments are especially idiotic. The reporters didn't lie; they just waited 2 1/2 hours until Bush had left Baghdad before reporting that he had been there. Journalists often get information that is "embargoed"--i.e., not to be released until a time of the source's choosing--and by and large they comply with such embargoes. Moreover, withholding facts "because it serves a larger truth" is precisely what reporters do when they use anonymous sources.

Rosentiel adds that Bush's 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." Well, it's true that the element of surprise helped make this one of the most dramatic political gestures in recent history (actually, we can't think of anything that comes close to surpassing it). But what Rosentiel seems to be saying is that reporters had an obligation to diminish the news value of the story in order to hurt Bush politically.

Finally, Shock and Awe
Remember the "shock and awe" campaign in Baghdad that never materialized last March? CNN reports it finally arrived yesterday, when Bush emerged from behind the curtain:

The shocked and elated soldiers jumped to their feet, pumped their fists in the air, roared with delight, and grabbed their cameras to snap photographs. . . .

At the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where reporters had been told Bush would be having Thanksgiving dinner, the reaction among the press corps was shock and awe.

CNN's "ticker" yesterday kept mentioning that Bush was the first U.S. president ever to travel to Iraq--which is true, though Bill Clinton sent his wife.

London's far-left Independent newspaper, home of America-hating polemicist Robert Fisk, predictably sneers, headlining its story on the trip "The Turkey Has Landed: How Bush Cooked Up a Secret Mission to Give Thanks to His Troops." It ends as follows:

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."

But although one of the bylines on the Independent story is "Phil Reeves in Baghdad," this quote seems to have been lifted without attribution from a Reuters dispatch.

Another Reuters dispatch mentions that President Bush by the way didn't serve in Vietnam: "The 57-year-old president, whose absence from active service in Vietnam was an issue during his election campaign, succeeded in impressing many of his troops and bolstering their morale."

Yet another Reuters dispatch helpfully explains Thanksgiving to those poor souls whose countries don't celebrate it: "Thanksgiving is one of the most cherished holidays in the United States, traditionally celebrated with a turkey dinner shared among family and friends who 'give thanks' for their blessings and good fortune." One man's thanks are another's ingratitude?

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