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Thanksgiving marks the season when hearts begin turning towards home, and this year again finds many of our young men and women in a war they did not choose, but one they are bravely waging. Some have given their lives to protect not only you and me and our children from enemies who hate us, but to liberate a people who are oppressed by these same enemies. None of us should ever take any of this for granted. It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since President Bush made his surprise visit to our troops in Baghdad last...

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush made Thanksgiving Day calls from his Texas ranch to U.S. troops abroad on Thursday, a year after he made a secret trip to spend the holiday with soldiers in Iraq. "The president wanted to express his gratitude for their service and sacrifice and to wish them a happy Thanksgiving," said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan. Last year, Bush secretly flew to Baghdad for Thanksgiving dinner with U.S. troops. This year, the president spent the holiday at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, where he also rode his bike, chopped some brush and had a traditional turkey-and-stuffing...

Bush makes suprise visit to Iraq almost one year ago A text of President Bush's remarks Thursday to U.S. troops in Baghdad, as provided by the White House: Thank you. I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere. Thank you for inviting me to dinner. General Sanchez, thank you, sir, for your kind invitation and your strong leadership. Ambassador Bremer, thank you for your steadfast belief in freedom and peace. I want to thank the members of the Governing Council who are here, pleased you are joining us on our nation's great holiday, it's a chance to give thanks...

  The President’s surprise 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to the U.S. troops in Iraq has inspired Talking Presidents to create a new action figure, Turkey Dinner Bush.Irvine, CA (PRWEB via PR Web Direct) November 17, 2004 -- The President’s surprise 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to the U.S. troops in Iraq has inspired Talking Presidents to create a new action figure, Turkey Dinner Bush. The secret Thanksgiving trip was the first visit by an American President to Iraq. The trip was said to have boosted the morale of troops serving in Iraq, as well as to have inspired patriotism among...

An article last Sunday about surprises in politics referred incorrectly to the turkey carried by President Bush during his unannounced visit to American troops in Baghdad over Thanksgiving. It was real, not fake.

Hey to all, Well, what a year it has been, not what I would call boring to say the least. I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I am sorry that I will not be able to spend it with you all but the war and the mission goes on. A good day for us is a boring day and no one gets hurt, but that's not very often. Our Christmas Day will probably bring a somewhat good meal and then back to missions there are no holidays here. We will conduct patrols and...

Several weeks ago, Time magazine ran a cover story about how split the country is in its opinion of President Bush. The theme of the story was that with this president, there appears to be little or no middle ground in the electorate. You either love him or hate him. The reaction to the discussion within this space last week about the newspaper's coverage of the president's surprise Thanksgiving Day trip to visit the troops in Baghdad was typical of the bipolar feelings Time found going into the 2004 election year. Of the three or four dozen e-mails I received...

Reader John McCrarey, who's daughter recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan, sent in this eyewitness account of Bush's visit to Iraq, from a captain on the scene: An Email from a Captain in Iraq We knew there was a dinner planned with ambassador Bremer and LTG Sanchez. There were 600 seats available and all the units in the division were tasked with filling a few tables. Naturally, the 501st MI battalion got our table. Soldiers were grumbling about having to sit through another dog-and-pony show, so we had to pick soldiers to attend. I chose not to go. But...

Bush criticised for duping air traffic control By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 13 December 2003 President Bush's secret Thanksgiving Day trip to Baghdad has been criticised by the British air traffic controllers' union for threatening the safety of other travellers and exposing a weakness in the system that could be exploited by terrorists. David Luxton, the national secretary of Prospect, said that Mr Bush's surprise holiday flight to visit American troops serving in Iraq, during which his Boeing 747 was falsely identified to air traffic control as a Gulfstream 5 jet for security reasons, broke international regulations. "The overriding concern...

A Baghdad Thanksgiving's Lingering Aftertaste By Dana Milbank Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A35 Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S. military, is bucking for a court-martial. When last we checked in on Stripes, it was reporting on a survey it did of troops in Iraq, finding that half of those questioned described their units' moral as low and their training as insufficient and said they did not plan to reenlist. With the Pentagon just recovering from that, Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met...

Support for Bush, war going back up By Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — Public support for the war in Iraq, on the downswing since establishing the peace there turned messy, has climbed back to its highest level since August, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. (Related link: Poll results) Political analysts suggest the positive impact from President Bush's surprise Thanksgiving Day trip to Iraq and a relatively low level of U.S. deaths over the past two weeks might be driving the rise. But they note that injuries to 61 U.S. soldiers Tuesday by two suicide bombers in Iraq might trigger...

Subject: A Letter from Iraq > > >Hi, All: Just forwarding another message from our young female AF captain stationed in Iraq. > >We knew there was a dinner planned with ambassador Bremer and LTG Sanchez. There were 600 seats available and all the units in the division weretasked with filling a few tables. Naturally, the 501st MI battalion got ourtable. Soldiers were grumbling about having to sit through another dog-and-pony show, so we had to pick soldiers to attend. I chose not to go. > >But, about 1500 the G2, LTC Devan, came up to me and with a...

President George W. Bush’s unannounced trip to have Thanksgiving Dinner with troops in Baghdad has had relatively little impact on his job performance rating, which remains relatively unchanged from Mid-October and early November polling. Bush Job Performance Positive: 49% Negative 51% The most recent Zogby America poll of 1,002 likely voters chosen at random was conducted December 4-6, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points. Margins are higher in sub-groups. Overall opinion of the President has improved slightly from early November. Nearly three in five (58%) say their opinion of him is somewhat or very favorable,...

washingtonpost.com Was This Turkey a Story? By Michael Getler Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page B06 The Thanksgiving turkey is long gone, but some Post readers think the paper is still sticking a fork in the White House and President Bush. At issue is a story in Thursday's paper by White House reporter Mike Allen, who accompanied the president on his holiday visit to the troops at Baghdad airport and who provided first-rate coverage of the event. The most widely published image of that visit was an Associated Press photo of a beaming president wearing an Army workout jacket, surrounded by...

<p>Yes, I was there.</p> <p>It was totally insane. Let me start from the beginning in the hope that I can catch my breath. Several days ago I received an All Hands email asking anyone who wanted to go to a ‘Thanksgiving Dinner with the Troops’ to respond with badge number and some other information. The email said there would be a lottery drawing for the few seats available. This morning I received notice that I had won (!!) and to go to a meeting point at 1500. Anyway long story short, I arrived at the airport with about 15-20 others, and was escorted into the huge chow hall where several hundred soldiers were sitting. I found an empty spot at one of the tables and started chatting with the men and women in uniform. They were shy at first, thinking I was some kind of VIP (hardly!). We talked about home and what we are doing here- and slowly they relaxed. And so did I. Time ticked on- and we were there over an hour, waiting for something…anything. Bremer and Sanchez came in- still nothing. What were we waiting for, I wondered? The guys were more patient than I- just shrugging their shoulders and looking more and more unimpressed.</p>

Based on some of the response to last week's column - about the adulation I felt for President George W. Bush's flying a good distance around the world on Thanksgiving Day to meet, greet and say "thank you" to our soldiers in Iraq - it seems to me the Democratic politicians and card-carriers alike may be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Consider, for instance, the following words of anguish in an e-mail from "Dzerres": "It's embarrassing how far you have your nose up Bush's ---! 150 minutes in Baghdad, flying in under the cover of darkness, serving mashed...

<p>Two top public officials went to Iraq in the last two weeks. One was President Bush. He was cheered by troops who expressed what appeared to be genuine affection for him. The other was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat. She found it difficult to locate soldiers wanting to dine with her, according to some press reports.</p>

<p>The most compelling evidence of the success of President Bush's trip to Iraq was the reaction of the opposition. No, not the Iraqi opposition--or "resistance," as the French have taken to calling it. I mean the American opposition: the Democrats and the news media.</p>

The Thanksgiving turkey is long gone, but some Post readers think the paper is still sticking a fork in the White House and President Bush.At issue is a story in Thursday's paper by White House reporter Mike Allen, who accompanied the president on his holiday visit to the troops at Baghdad airport and who provided first-rate coverage of the event. The most widely published image of that visit was an Associated Press photo of a beaming president wearing an Army workout jacket, surrounded by soldiers and carrying a picture-perfect, golden-brown turkey on a platter.But in the Thursday article Allen reveals...

POWERFUL STUFF... The below arrived today from the wife of a retired Air Force friend of ours. If you've never been in the military, this may not seem like any big deal but, from the troops' standpoint at least, trust me*, this is powerful stuff. * (I am equally sure this wouldn't play as well in Berkeley, but then, that's where we lost the Vietnam War, so I suppose that's no real surprise to anyone, either.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > FW: An Email from a Captain in Iraq > We knew there was a dinner planned with ambassador Bremer and LTG Sanchez....