US: The trip by President Bush to Baghdad on Wednesday evening was planned with such secrecy that his parents arrived at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch for Thanksgiving dinner thinking he would be there, writes Conor O'Clery
Mr Bush had taken off in an unmarked car with tinted windows, through rush-hour traffic, the first time he had been in traffic for three years. He was flown first to Andrews Air Force base and then Baghdad.
Just before he left Texas, a White House spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, told correspondents: "The president will be spending Thanksgiving at his ranch here in Crawford."
It was the most blatant lie since Larry Speakes of the Reagan White House told a reporter the day before the US invaded Grenada that the idea was "preposterous". Many reporters and editors accepted it as justified for security, however only 13 media personnel were invited and this caused an outcry. CNN was miffed not to be included while Fox News had a crew on board. The New York Times was furious to be left out of such a historic mission and its Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman called the briefing "deliberate deception" and the "stealth trip" a bad precedent.
The chosen journalists were picked up at short notice and not allowed to tell their families. Even editors did not know where they were. Mike Allen of the Washington Post was hanging out in Crawford when he was motioned to a rented pick-up truck. He was driven to a concealed car-park and there the White House communications director told him he was Baghdad-bound. Back at the ranch, other reporters thought Mr Bush was inside right until he was on his way home from Baghdad.
On Air Force One, Mr Bush told the media that if anyone had leaked, "I was fully prepared to turn this baby around and come home". A Bloomberg News reporter called it the ultimate road trip - to be AWOL with the president. On the way back Mr Bush told them: "You're a credit to your nation, a credit to your profession."
The television coverage of the less than three-hour visit has been adulatory. The president in war-torn Iraq. The president serving turkey to the troops. The president hugging soldiers. The visit was a master stroke, stunning Democratic opponents and counteracting the criticism of Bush for not attending soldiers' funerals. It will also help to erase the premature Mission Accomplished photo-op on the aircraft carrier in May.
The last time a US president left the country unannounced was apparently when Franklin D. Roosevelt went to Yalta during the second World War. Lyndon B. Johnson made a similar journey to Vietnam. Coming at the end of a week when the economy took off and the president's Medicare reform got through Congress, Bush strategists are cock-a-hoop. If they could have the presidential election tomorrow they would jump at it.
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Mr Bush's trip to Baghdad, at the end of a month which has seen the death of 96 coalition troops so far, served also to distract attention from trenchant criti- cism of the Iraq operation from inside the administration. Retired general Jay Garner, who first headed the occupation effort, said it had been a blunder to put too few troops in Baghdad. In a BBC interview he also accused his successor, Paul Bremer, of making a mistake in disbanding the Iraqi army, which he had been planning to use in reconstruction. Garner also complained of bad relations between the Pentagon and State Department.
He did not learn of a State Department study on possible problems in post-war Iraq until a few weeks before the war began in March.
The "Future of Iraq Project" had been co-ordinated by State Department official Tom Warrick and involved consultation with 16 groups of Iraqi exiles. When Garner heard about it, he hired Warwick for his team but the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, told him to fire him.
Garner protested that Warrick was too valuable to lose, but Rumsfeld told him: "This came to me from such a high level that I can't overturn it." Which means either the President or the Vice President, Dick Cheney, gave the order.
The incident is also detailed in a vivid 20,000-word account of the "War After The War" in the New Yorker by George Packer which details the extent of the Pentagon's grip on Iraq policy.
Thomas White, Secretary of the Army, who was fired in April, told Packer that the Pentagon team led by under-secretary Douglas Feith thought Iraq would be a straightforward, manageable task "because this would be a war of liberation and therefore the reconstruction would be short-lived".
The Defence Department put its faith in Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi who was to form a provisional government, until it became clear he had no support. Packer described a scene not long ago when Cheney approached the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and, sticking a finger in his chest, said: "If you hadn't opposed the INC [Iraqi National Congress\] and Chalabi we wouldn't be in this mess."
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We still don't know for sure (though people have a good idea) who in the White House was responsible for the potential criminal act of leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent back in September. However another case of a leaked memo has resulted in a Republican aide being dismissed.
Senator Edward Kennedy and Democratic colleague Dick Durbin had complained that a memo on their political strategy on blocking confirmation of a number of Mr Bush's judicial nominations was stolen from a senate computer and leaked to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. An investigation was conducted as a result of which a staff member of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has been put on administrative leave for "improperly obtaining data" from the computer networks of two senators.
"I was shocked to learn that this may have occurred," said Mr Hatch, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I am mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch."