It was the first trip ever by an American president to Iraq.
Air Force One landed in darkness at Baghdad International Airport. Security fears were heightened by an attack last Saturday in which a missile struck a DHL cargo plane, forcing it to make an emergency landing at the airport with its wing aflame.
Bush was to spend only two hours on the ground, limiting his visit to a dinner at the airport with U.S. forces. The troops had been told that the VIP guests would be L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq.
Bush's trip — on the large plane he most frequently uses — was a well-guarded secret — announced only after he landed in Baghdad.
In a ruse staged in the name of security, the White House had put out word that Bush would be spending Thanksgiving at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with his wife, Laura, his parents and other family members. Even the dinner menu was announced.
Instead, Bush slipped away from his home without notice Wednesday evening and flew to Washington to pick up aides and a handful of reporters sworn to secrecy. Plans called for the trip to be abandoned if word had leaked out in advance.
Within the White House only a handful of senior aides knew about the trip, officials said.
Security fears were underscored by regular attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. More than five dozen U.S. troops were killed by hostile fire in November, more than any other month since the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1. Early this week, a U.S. military official, Col. William Darley, said attacks peaked at more than 40 per day about two weeks ago and have since dropped to about 30 per day.
The violence persisted Thursday as the president was en route here.
Insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Italian mission in Baghdad, damaging the building but causing no injuries, the U.S. military said. Also, a U.S. military convoy came under attack on the main highway west of Baghdad near the town of Abu Ghraib, witnesses said. And in the northern city of Mosul, unidentified gunmen shot dead an Iraqi police sergeant, said Brig. Gen. Muwaffaq Mohammed.
Since operations began, nearly 300 U.S. service members have died of hostile action, including 183 since May 1 when Bush declared an end to major fighting.
Bush's father visited U.S. troops at a desert outpost in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving Day 1990, in the runup to the Gulf War (news - web sites). "We won't pull punches. We are not here on some exercise. And we're not walking away until our mission is done, until the invader is out of Kuwait," he told the troops. At one p oint, he climbed into a bunker to chat with troops.
Bush's father shared lunch with U.S. troops 65 miles from Kuwait, occupied at the time by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s forces. George H.W. Bush had been the first U.S. president to visit a front-line area since President Nixon went to Vietnam in 1969.
This is a b*tch slap to Hillary and Saddam