I don’t know what to make of President Bush’s surprise visit to Baghdad. I’m inclined to be pretty damned pissed about it — after all, it’s clearly a political stunt aimed at boosting his sagging approval ratings. I can’t help thinking about how much it cost to fly him from Crawford, Texas to Baghdad and then back again 2-1/2 hours later. He was in the air far longer than he was actually on the ground in Iraq, and he never left the airport in Baghdad.
He seems to have perfected the art of using government perks and taxpayer money to promote his candidacy.How much good did it actually do for 600 soldiers to see a glimpse of him in Iraq? For all the tax money spent on this stunt, he could have sent each and every one of them a pretty spectacular gift of some sort along with a note from the President.
Or maybe that money could have provided a little more protection for those troops.
Oh, and he once again used this line, implicitly connecting Iraq with September 11:
You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq, so that we don’t have to face them in our own country.
There really weren’t any terrorists in Iraq… until the U.S. invaded.
I suppose his trip might have cost somewhere around the price of a Clinton haircut.