Bush Flashes Our Troops the Bird

Bush's PR stunt in Baghdad underscores US crisis

...Political aides such as Karl Rove engineered the public relations stunt, hoping the televised images of cheering troops and the president serving out turkey dinners would boost Bush’s standing in the polls. But the circumstances of the trip, with Bush stealing in and out of Baghdad like a thief in the night, only demonstrate the fragility of the US grip on the occupied country.

Bush told his audience of 600 soldiers at Baghdad International Airport that his government would not “retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.” But the security measures taken for the trip suggest that the armed opposition to US control of Iraq is far more substantial than a handful of terrorists or Saddam Hussein loyalists.

Air Force One flew into Baghdad under conditions of secrecy so total that air traffic controllers at the airport did not know the identity of the plane. Bush was taken from his ranch in Crawford, Texas in an unmarked car, and Air Force One flew under a false call signal, with its lights off and escorted by US jet fighters. Bush spent 27 hours in the air in order to spend only two-and-a-half hours on the ground in Iraq....Link...