Meanwhile, as Kerry, Feingold and others continue to declare defeat, President Bush decided to make an unannounced visit to Baghdad, no doubt as a show of support for the newly completed Iraqi government and a tough-talking Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plans to increase security in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.


From Fox News:


President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday to meet newly named Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and discuss the next steps in the troubled, three-year-old war.

It was a dramatic move by Bush, traveling to violence-rattled Baghdad less than a week after the death of terror chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a bombing attack. The president was expected to be in Baghdad a little more than five hours.

You can say what you will about his successes and failures as a President, but George W. Bush certainly has courage. Not many Presidents—actually none that I know of, but I hardly claim empiracal knowledge—have made it a practice to visit our soldiers and our allies in an active war zone, and I can’t recall a time when the technological capability for the enemy to strike against a President during a visit been greater.

This article (and others, to be sure) tells a reeling al Qaeda where Bush is and when he will be leaving the airport, and the flight paths in and out of the airport are anything but secret. Frankly, I fear the possibility of an attempt to use MANPADS against Air Force One as it leaves Baghdad International. We know that insurgents have Russian-designed SA-16 man-portable surface to air missiles, and if DEBKAfilecan be believed, as many as a thousand Iranian-built SA-7s. I do not know how much of a threat to Air Force One small man-portable missiles would be, but a volley of these missiles fired simultaneously as the President’s plane was ascending could be problematic to say the least.

Those worries aside, the reasoning behind Bush’s visit is sound. He is there to give a morale boost for an American military accused of murdering innocent civilians, and to show support for the Iraqi government that seems serious about cracking down on both insurgent and sectarian violence.

Good show, Mr. President.