Commander in Chief, President Bush, in Iraq

Bush, Advisers Make Surprise Visit to Iraq

By Michael Fletcher and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 3, 2007; 9:36 AM

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Anbar Province, Iraq, Sept. 3 -- President Bush made a surprise visit to this isolated and well fortified air field in Anbar province Monday to meet with top U.S. and Iraqi officials and to showcase what he calls one of the successes of his decision to surge 30,000 additional troops into Iraq.

Bush slipped out of a side door of the White House for the furtive trip that was aimed at bolstering his position for not drawing down troops from Iraq. During six hours on the ground here, the president was to meet with Army Gen. David Petreaus and other military commanders and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, before holding a session with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and members of his central government.

President Bush walks from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 31, 2007, to make a statement on home ownership financing in the Rose Garden. Afterward, Bush was to meet with Sunni tribal leaders whose cooperation has made Anbar Province, a former al-Qaeda stronghold, significantly safer during the past year.

Aides said Bush would prod Maliki and other Shiite national leaders to support the local Sunni officials, whom the White House has praised for fostering political reconciliation that has proved elusive in most other parts of Iraq. Later, Bush was to make short remarks to about 750 U.S. troops and other guests.

"The president felt this is something he had to do in order to put himself in a position to make some important decisions," National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said of the visit.

Bush's dramatic and secretive visit to Iraq -- his third since the war began in 2003 -- comes at a pivotal moment in the debate over the future of the conflict. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and Crocker, are scheduled to testify before Congress next week on progress has been made since Bush ordered 30,000 troops into the country earlier this year. Their testimony is to be followed on Sept. 15 by a White House report to Congress assessing progress in Iraq.

Bush has argued that the strategy he announced in January, which increased the U.S. presence in Iraq to more than 160,000 troops, is showing signs of success and deserves more time -- an argument he is expected to continue pressing in his report to lawmakers.

But several influential Republicans have joined Democrats in recent months to demand that Bush begin withdrawing U.S. troops. Pointing to a recent Government Accountability Office draft audit as well as a recent intelligence estimate on Iraq, they say that despite some modest security improvements, the troop surge has not been followed by political reconciliation. In addition, critics say, while violence is down in areas where the troop surge was targeted -- mainly in Anbar and Baghdad -- it has increased elsewhere in Iraq.

Despite the mixed reports, Bush has argued that Anbar is an example of the kind of progress that could be replicated elsewhere if the United States continues its current strategy. Aides said he intended his visit here to underscore that point. They said he also wanted to press his case to Iraqi leaders before Congress resumes the war debate.

"There is no substitute for that kind of first-hand experience and seeing directly for yourself and talking directly . . . not only to national leaders but provincial leaders," presidential counselor Ed Gillespie told reporters aboard Air Force One. "I think the information that he gets here, hopefully, will be a contribution to the discussion that we will have" later this month.

Bush's visit was shrouded in secrecy from the start. Conceived by a small gaggle of senior Bush aides about six weeks ago, the trip was a tightly held secret at the White House, said Dana Perino, a deputy press secretary.

Reporters who were planning to travel on the president's plane directly to an economic conference in Australia on Monday were called over the weekend and summoned for individual, face-t0-face meetings with Perino or Gordon Johndroe, the National Security Council spokesman.
There, they were told to gather at Andrews Air Force Base Sunday evening, rather than Monday morning, for the trip to Iraq. At Andrews, Secret Service agents collected computers, cell phones and other electronic devices from reporters. The journalists then loaded onto two passenger vans, which drove them into the large, heavily guarded hangar that houses the president's plane.

Reporters waited in the plane, with the window shades down, as the president slipped out of the White House and traveled to Andrews in a discreet two-car convoy, instead of his usual motorcade, aides said. Once the president was aboard, Air Force One was pushed out of the hangar into the darkness to begin the 12-hour flight to Iraq.



President Bush walks from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 31, 2007, to make a statement on home ownership financing in the Rose Garden. In flight, reporters were told their precise destination and had their computers returned to them, although they were instructed to turn off their wireless function to prevent the signals from allowing the president's plane to be tracked.

"The president heard about this idea and instantly took to it and that's why we're doing it," Hadley said.

Here at this isolated air base in the middle of a northern Iraqi desert, officials said there should be no security concerns. The base, which was captured by Australian troops from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's forces during the early weeks of the war, has a 13-mile perimeter and is home to 10,000 U.S. troops, including 7,000 Marines and 3,ooo members of the Army.

Traveling with Bush on his plane was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, traveled ahead of Bush to the base and was scheduled to take part in some of the meetings, along with other top military officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace and U.S. Middle East commander Adm. William Fallon.

"This will be the last big gathering of the president's advisers and Iraqi leaders before the president makes his decisions on the way forward," said Geoff Morrell, Pentagon spokesperson. "He's assembled his war council, and they are all convening with Iraqi leaders to discuss the way forward."

Despite what military officials describe as disagreements within the ranks of the Pentagon and U.S. military over when and how quickly to carry out any U.S. troop reduction in Iraq, the official said he believed senior U.S. military and defense leaders plan to give "collective" rather than independent recommendations to Bush. In addition to meetings with Maliki, Gates and other military officials also plan to meet with Iraqi leaders including President Jalal Talabani, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, and Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih.

Gates and the other leaders are also seeking to gauge progress in Anbar, where Sunni tribal leaders last fall began to switch sides and cooperate with U.S. forces to expel extremist insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq from their communities in a movement that is now spreading rapidly in other parts of Iraq.

Attacks were so high in Anbar Province last year that they even eclipsed the number in Baghdad, and Anbar has long been the most lethal part of Iraq relative to its small population. Yet in the past quarter of this year, Anbar has ranked fifth or sixth among Iraq's 18 provinces for levels of violence, the senior defense official said.

"Nobody's suggesting for a minute that it is now all peaceful and well within the government's control, but its significantly better than it has been in the past," said a senior defense official.

The decision to hold Monday's meeting in Anbar, where the population of 1.2 million people is 95 percent Sunni, is symbolically important as U.S. commanders seek to leverage the grassroots empowerment of Sunnis that first started here to promote broader political reconciliation at the national level.

Sunni leaders in Anbar have begun to accept as unrealistic "any notion as many had years ago after the fall of Saddam that somehow there would be a status quo ante and a return to Sunni rule," the defense official said. Instead, they realize that joining in an unified Iraq, rather than fighting against it, would bring them jobs and economic benefits, including some of the $10 billion the central government plans to distribute in 2007 to the provinces. "The country is moving forward and it will either move forward with them or without them."

Still, leaders of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government remain wary about the Sunni movement, which has seen thousands of former insurgents join fledging armed security forces not only in Anbar but in northern Iraq and Diyala province in the east as well as around Baghdad, where Shiite sensitivities are highest, U.S. officials say. The government has moved slowly to incorporate the Sunni forces as part of the regular police forces and Army, for example, particularly around Baghdad.

"There are those inside the Maliki government that might want to characterize this as arming a Sunni opposition to the Shia-based Maliki government," said the senior defense official. As a result, U.S. officials see it as vital to persuade Maliki to visit Anbar, where he has rarely traveled since becoming prime minister, to try to turn the grassroots movement into reconciliation at the national level.

"This needs to be an Iraqi process to connect the top-down reconciliation to the bottom-up reconciliation," the senior official said. He said a major goal is to solidify the gains in Anbar through holding provincial elections and speeding the flow of financial and other resources from the central government. "One of the great concerns that we have is that this not be a temporary marriage of convenience," he said.

Although Bush has touted the substantial political and security progress made in Anbar province, he was not scheduled to leave the security of the base to see those changes first hand.

"He is on a tight timeline," said Gen. Doug Lute, a deputy national security adviser, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We didn't really approach it like he is going to leave the base."

"He has to get into Australia" for the economic conference he will attend upon leaving Iraq, Gillespie added.

White House officials rejected any suggestion that the president's trip was a publicity stunt aimed at seizing the upper hand in the upcoming congressional debate over the war. For one, they said, members of Congress have visited Iraq in recent weeks. Also, they said, the face-to-face meetings are invaluable.

"There are some people who might try to derive this trip as a photo opportunity," Perino said. "We wholeheartedly disagree."

She said the visit is a chance for the president to meet his commanders, as well as the leaders of Iraq on their turf.

"He will be able to look Prime Minister Maliki in the eye and talk with him about the progress that is starting to happen in Iraq, what we hope to see and the challenges that remain," Perino said.

Maybe you can tell us why Bush has to sneak into Iraq if it is so safe there?

Here's an idea! How about we GIVE Bush to Iraq and he can run that country? We can elect a new president here and start over.

DID SOMEONE SHOT HIM YET??????????? THEN I DONT CARE

Why doesn't Bush ever spend more than a few hours in Iraq?

"isolated and well fortified"

Denial, denial, denial......... What doesn't look good in those conditions?

"6 more Months.... I promise.."

What time today he will claim that ..........., "Petraeus , your doing a heck of a job"

They've made Baghdad safer but only with a shitload of soldiers and fortifications. Meanwhile, insurgents have simply moved onward to other cities and are creating chaos there. If we declare Baghdad a success and move our resources out of there and into a different city then the insurgents will just pour back into Baghdad. It's a friggin game of whack-a-mole. The administration is using the one city they've been able to secure as an example for political face-saving purposes. There are more holes in this dyke then the military has fingers.

History has shonw that the factions in that part of the world fight at their convenience. They will pack it in for a while and continue when they feel pike the odds are in their favor. The British found this out in WW1

Exactly what I have said all along to the denialists like ncmoron, vacate, and dimmie.
Yet, they can't grasp this FACT and the FACT that it's the same "plan" since baghdad fell. Which is to say, no plan at all, just stay the course and continue the war for shady purposes.

It's a warzone, dipshit. What did you expect to be done - leaflet the areas that Al Qaeda inhabits and let them know in advance?

And once again you revert back to the Liberal lie that the September date (i.e. report) was established as a date when Iraq was to be "safe." Nothing could be further from the truth, yet you keep insisting otherwise. You are as brainwashed as ChaseDC.

Now its the hold on until the Democrats take over in the White House in 09 and then blame them for not letting Bush winning the phony war.

I am an proud athiest... but hey god... please strike his plane from the sky.

...no, we were supposed to see some "progress" by September...instead (as predicted) we have complete political FAILURE...

Wake up.

Welcome back from "time out," Fdubya.

Wow, must be a great place! You seem to know what General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are going to say a week from now.
Please, don't hold out...do share!

Certainly you aren't jumping to conclusions.

Cuntflap,
Do you know "congressionally mandated benchmarks" are? Of course you don't. All you need to know is that only 3 of 18 have been met at the 6 month mark set by YOUR heroes in the Bush admin.

16% is for losers like you. Congrats! :bigup:

Funny - in July (when the President submitted the last progress report, as required by Congress) the big Liberal talking point was "Zero for Eighteen!!"

Now we are at 3-18 in a month's time.

Hummm....from 0-18 to 3-18. That sounds a lot like...what's the word...pro....progr.....

Help me out AB, how would you describe the increase in meeting these benchmarks?

I know just as much as they do about the political situation (and have just as much control over it!):

Its FUBAR...

OK I'll bite.

What is Petraeus and Crocker going to report.

...whatever the WH wants them too...???


*badumpdump*

:band:

:birthday:

Vacate- I would agree with you that 3 of 18 is better than 0, but why is it that progress has only been made in the last 30 days? What happened to the last 4 years? And if you would agree that the administration has made no real progress prior to the month (hence your 3 - 18), why then is there no accountability for the lives, money and time lost?

Hey stupid, 3 of 18 is 16%. That is FAILURE. Miserable failure.

And it's no suprise that you are having trouble pronouncing "PROGRESS". It's obvious from your ideas you have never experienced it.

What "accountability" do you want? Rumsfeld is gone, as well as the commanders who were running the show.
Look, I'm not saying that mistakes weren't made in the first 3 years....of course there was. But we have a new strategy and it is apparently producing measurable results. Keep in mind the political benchmarks are only part of the story. They don't measure how we are doing against Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example.

The point being that arguing about mistakes made in the early months of the war or whether or not we should have gone in is pointless. We are where we are, and the debate should be where we go from here, not who should be "held accountable" for past mistakes. In my opinion those who have made mistakes are no longer in the picture.