Washington — On Thanksgiving, an American national holiday that fuses traditional family turkey dinners with televised football, U.S. President George W. Bush pulled the day's best quarterback sneak by secretly flying to Baghdad to thank battle-weary soldiers and serve them dinner in an active combat zone.
Mr. Bush flew into Baghdad in the predawn darkness yesterday, travelling under security so rigorous that his parents arrived at his Texas ranch expecting a quiet Thanksgiving dinner and even his security detail didn't know when he left.
The President's daughters, who like millions of other American college students were home for the holidays, were told where he was headed just hours before he left.
Top aides told those on the plane that if news of the trip broke "while we're in the air, we're turning around," and Mr. Bush himself warned the small gaggle of journalists aboard the flight not to use their cellphones. "No calls, got it?" he said, illustrating with a slash across his own throat.
U.S. President George W. Bush carries a platter of turkey and fixings as he visits U.S. troops for Thanksgiving in Baghdad on Thursday. News of the trip was not even released until Air Force One had already left Iraq. (Anja Niedringhaus/AP)
Six hundred soldiers drawn from the U.S. 82nd Airborne and 1st Armoured divisions, who were sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner in dusty fatigues at Baghdad's airport, had no forewarning of the President's arrival.
Pandemonium erupted when he stepped, unannounced, into the mess hall.
"I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere," he told the cheering troops, shedding tears, and then with the Texas drawl that he rarely uses, added: "I can't think of finer folks to have Thanksgiving dinner with than you all."
Mr. Bush also met with top U.S. commanders, four members of the Iraqi Governing Coalition and Baghdad's mayor and city council during his visit, although he did not see any ordinary Iraqis.
The elaborate security precautions surrounding the trip were necessitated by real risks: Just five days earlier, a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile nearly downed a commercial cargo aircraft as it took off from Baghdad.
It was likely the most dangerous foray into a combat zone ever by a sitting American president, as well as the first-ever trip to Iraq by same. (Mr. Bush did fly over Baghdad on his way home from a Middle Eastern trip last June.) Although he spent only 21/2 hours in Iraq, the morale-building image of him humbly dishing out dinner in a chow line to ordinary soldiers may eclipse the now embarrassing triumphal flight to an aircraft carrier last May when he declared that "major combat operations" were over in Iraq. Since then, nearly 200 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in a stubborn insurgent campaign against the occupation. More than 60 of those deaths have come this month.
Mr. Bush's trip actually began Wednesday night, when he left his wife, Laura, his daughters and his parents behind at his Prairie Chapel ranch near Crawford, Tex. He was secretly hustled past a gaggle of reporters in an unmarked van for a 45-minute drive to a former air base, where the presidential Boeing 747 was waiting. He reportedly joked along the way about being caught in traffic for the first time in nearly three years.
Climbing aboard the distinctive blue-and-white jet on the back steps, along with a handful of aides and a tiny press pool all sworn to secrecy, Mr. Bush took off for Washington.
The reporters who remained in Crawford, oblivious, had been elaborately duped, having received a copy of the family Thanksgiving dinner menu and a note that the presidential plane was returning to the nation's capital for routine maintenance. But the aircraft was in fact flying to Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, where Mr. Bush switched to an identical Boeing 747 and took off for Iraq.
The only security threat during the trip came when a British Airways pilot spotted the presidential plane in the air and asked if it was Air Force One. White House officials told pool reporters that the U.S. plane's chief pilot remained silent before replying, "Gulf Stream Five," which is a smaller jet.
The big plane neared Iraqi air space after sundown yesterday evening, and blinds were closed before the craft landed at a darkened Baghdad International, site of fierce fighting during this year's war. The strip now hosts a major air base supporting the occupation.
"People on the ground do not know this is Air Force One landing," an aide told reporters before touchdown, a critical security precaution despite the plane's missile-detection systems and secure communications and command links.
After a short ride in blacked-out vehicles to the mess hall, Mr. Bush waited out of sight while Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, told soldiers he was going to ask the most senior person present to read the President's Thanksgiving Day proclamation to them.
On cue, the Commander-in-Chief stepped from behind a curtain, wearing a 1st Armoured Division patch on a windbreaker. "We did not charge hundreds of miles through 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," Mr. Bush told the troops. "We will prevail."
Then, without having left the heavily guarded airport, he was headed home, along with his retinue, which included White House chief of staff Andy Card and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
The entire trip took about 30 hours, 27 of them in the air.
