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唖然の記録に留めよ！米WT：藪猿「喉掻き切り」猿真似電撃作戦
Thursday, Nov. 27, 2003 | Updated 8:21 p.m. ET
President Bush greets U.S. troops earlier today at Baghdad International Airport. (AP)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17151-2003Nov27.html
Bush Pays Surprise Thanksgiving Visit to Troops in Iraq
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 27, 2003; 4:02 PM
BAGHDAD, Nov. 27 -- President Bush made a secret trip to Iraq on Thursday to celebrate Thanksgiving with troops and pledge that he will not retreat in the face of increasing insurgent violence.
Bush surprised 600 soldiers of the 1st Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne Division attending a Thanksgiving celebration at the Bob Hope Dining Facility on the makeshift military base at Baghdad International Airport, telling them they "are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq so we don't have to face them in our own country.
"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 said, to a standing ovation. "We will prevail. We will win because our cause is just."
The president also met with four members of of Iraq's Governing Council, who praised his mission.
Bush pulled off the surprise trip -- the first by a U.S. president to Iraq -- in extraordinary secrecy dictated by concerns for his safety amid a surge in violence in recent months against U.S. and allied targets.
The stealthy moves included a departure from his Texas ranch in an unmarked car that got stuck in traffic and a takeoff and landing in darkness by Air Force One, which flew under a different call sign. Bush's aides said they would turn the plane around if word of the visit leaked out before he landed, but the news held until he was back in the air after a 2 1/2-hour visit and headed back to Crawford.
The president was introduced to the troops by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, who kept the crowd off guard by saying it was time for the most senior official present to read the president's Thanksiving Proclamation.
"Is there anyone back there more senior than us?" he asked, the signal for Bush to emerge from behind a curtain and for the stunned audience to erupt in cheers, "hoo-ahs" and waves of applause. The president was wearing a jacket bearing the patch of the 1st Armored Division.
Speaking in the chow hall before helping dish up the plates, Bush included a call to the people of Iraq to "seize the moment and rebuild your great country, based on human dignity and freedom."
"The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone forever," he said. "The United States and our coalition will help you, help you build a peaceful country so that your children can have a bright future. We'll help you find and bring to justice the people who terrorized you for years and are still killing innocent Iraqis. We will stay until the job is done."
The goverrning council members with whom Bush met today were Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader who is this month's council president, Mowaffak Rubaie, a Shiite Muslim physician who returned from exile in Britain, and Raja Khozai, a Shiite who directs a maternity hospital in the southern city of Diwaniya.
Chalabi said Bush "made a very important statement" about "staying the course in Iraq and declaring in Baghdad that the United States is here to finish the job."
Rubaie said Bush remarked to the council members that "I believe in the people of Iraq. They will make democracy happen."
"It was a very powerful moment," Rubaie said. "It was a hyper-happy Eid [al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan] for us and it's a hyper-happy Thanksgiving for the Americans."
Bush's strategists, who once had thought his handling of the war on terror might turn next year's reelection campaign into a cakewalk, now fret that the mounting casualties and chaos in Iraq could cost him the election if the public became convinced that he mishandled the war .
The trip came at a time when the White House is struggling to gain control both of Iraq and of Bush's image as commander-in-chief, after the military's swift rout of Saddam Hussein's government was tarnished by escalating guerrilla attacks on the U.S. troops who were supposed to rebuild the nation and prepare its population of 25 million for self-rule.
Just in the past week, a DHL courier plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile as it took off from Baghdad, a police chief working with U.S. authorities was assassinated and there was eruption of violence in Mosul that killed two American soldiers.
Bush included a salute to "the men and women of our military -- your friends and comrades -- who paid the ultimate price for our security and freedom.
"We ask for God's blessings on their families, their loved ones and their friends, and we pray for your safety and your strength as you continue to defend America and to spread freedom," he said.
Staff. Sgt. Gerrie Stokes Holloman, 34, of Baltimore, a multichannel communications specialist with the 1st Armored Division, 141st Signal Battalion, said Bush's visit "shows that he cares about us... It's not easy being here... For the most part, people are tired and want to go home. But the support and encouragement we get from our leadership builds a bond with our soldiers."
Polls have a showed a steady erosion in public confidence in Bush's handling of the occupation. The military has found no evidence of the weapons of mass destruction that the president has used as his chief justification for the invasion, and his aides have been battered by charges that he exaggerated the danger posed by Saddam Hussein.
The Pentagon says 434 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the invasion last March, 296 of them since Bush's speech in May declaring the end of major combat operations.
The unwillingness of U.S. allies to contribute significant numbers of troops has left U.S. forces overstretched and exhausted, and some units have been warned that they may not get the rest-and-recuperation breaks they had been promised. The Pentagon said Wednesday that it was added several thousand more Marines to the troop rotation announced on Nov. 6, meaning that the forces in Iraq may be closer to 110,000 next year rather than the expected 105,000.
National Guard and reserve units are enduring unexpectedly long deployments that threaten to create a political issue in key electoral states, and close to 8,000 reservists were notified this week that they could be mobilized over the next 18 months.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told reporters that he was out talking to soldiers today and the only morale problem he found was non-citizen soldiers saying they were having problems becoming citizens. "Not a single soldier" had another issue, he said.
Sanchez said he found about Bush's trip 72 hours ago and arranged for the extra security measures by telling those involved that "we're expecting some kind of threat."
The trip was a rare instance of a president leaving the country unannounced; President Franklin D. Roosevelt slipped out to the Yalta conference in February 1945.
Bush also flew secretly cross-country on Tuesday night.
He began the journey to Baghdad with a three-hour flight from his Texas ranch, where he had been planning to spend Thanksgiving with his parents, to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, to switch to an identical plane that was already refueled, and to pick up a few senior aides.
Wearing a work coat and baseball cap, Bush made the transfer in the super-secret, white-floored Air Force One hangar. Pausing at the top of the stairs of his new plane, Bush joined in the cloak-and dagger maneuvering of his staff, which had asked reporters to take the batteries out of their cell phones in Texas so they could not be tracked.
The hangar was too noisy for Bush to be heard, but he held his thumb and pinkie apart, and raised them to his ear, in the symbol of someone using a phone. "No calls, got it?" he mouthed, emphasizing the point by crossing his arms back and forth in front of him. He mimed a cut to his throat, and mouthed again, "No calls!"
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