World Terror

Bush Arrives on Carrier for Iraq Speech
May 1, 2003 03:25 PM EDT.....................................................................................................Read Bush's Flight to Carrier

President Bush, fully decked out in a
flight suit, greeted the crew aboard
the Abraham Lincoln. Never before
had a president landed aboard a
carrier at sea, much less taken
the controls of the aircraft. (NYTimes)

President Bush smiles after landing
in a U.S. Navy S-3B Viking on the
deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln,
in this image from video, Thursday,
May 1, 2003, in the Pacific Ocean
off the coast of California. The S-3B
Viking is dubbed Navy One because
of its presidential passenger.
(AP Photo/POOL via APTN)

ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN - President Bush on Thursday landed on board a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Pacific, where he will mark the end of major military operations in a prime-time television address.

The president was using the dramatic setting of a homebound aircraft carrier to refocus the U.S. mission in Iraq from a combat role to the tasks of reconstruction, policing and promotion of democracy.

..
After a screeching flight-deck landing in a Navy plane, Bush plunged into a crowd of service members aboard the ship, shaking hands, hugging people and posing for photos.

..Click Photos for larger Image

Prior to his address to the nation set for 9 p.m. EDT, the president also got a tour of the carrier, which launched hundreds of jets on wartime missions over Iraq.

In the address, the president was to give the nation closure to the fighting while avoiding a sweeping claim of victory. Thursday morning brought fresh reminders that the hostilities had not ceased: Seven U.S. soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack in Fallujah, Iraq.

Moreover, central questions remain unanswered. Saddam Hussein is unaccounted for, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and there is no new evidence that Saddam's government had ties to al-Qaida.

But Bush was celebrating what he views as the war's accomplishments - the end of Saddam's dictatorship and the elimination of a threat to the United States.

The president was casting the Iraq war as but one phase of the overall fight against terrorism. Indeed, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced during a visit Thursday to Afghanistan that major combat activity in that country had come to an end, long after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban regime from power.

Bush's speech, from the deck of the carrier, was meant as a dramatic thank-you to members of the military - 5,000 of whom are aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln - and the official start of U.S. reconstruction efforts.

The president was tying the Iraq war to efforts for a larger Mideast peace. Bush spoke to Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia earlier Thursday about the road map the administration offered a day earlier for ending Israeli-Palestinian hostilities.

President Bush declared that the military phase of the battle to topple Saddam Hussein's government was "one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11th, 2001, and still goes on."

Bush arrived on the carrier aboard a Navy jet that landed on the deck at more than 125 miles an hour and was stopped in seconds by a stretched cable. He had crossed the country on Air Force One, exchanged his business suit and tie for a flight suit and got a refresher course on ejecting from a jet. He took his place up front in the S-3B, next to the pilot, for the flight to the carrier 150 miles off the coast of San Diego.

It was an apparent presidential first. Presidents traditionally use helicopters to visit aircraft carriers.

Bush was touring the carrier's operations center, watching jets take off and meeting with F-18 pilots and with Capt. Kendall L. Card. After his speech, he was having dinner with about 150 enlisted sailors.

The Lincoln, which was commissioned in 1989 by Dick Cheney, then defense secretary and now the vice president, was returning from a 10-month deployment, the longest by a nuclear-powered carrier in history.

Its aircraft dropped nearly 1.2 million pounds of ordnance on Iraq, about 40 percent of the firepower that U.S. carriers and their jets rained down.

The bombs and missiles destroyed Iraqi air defense units, tanks, government and military buildings, fuel and ammunition stores, and provided cover for U.S. and British troops, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

The president was spending the night in the quarters that the ship's captain usually uses when the carrier is in port.

Overnight, the carrier was heading close enough to its San Diego destination that Bush could helicopter back to land on Friday morning.

In keeping with his practice in recent weeks, Bush was using a defense contractor as the setting for a speech Friday on both national security and the economy. He was visiting the Silicon Valley offices of United Defense Industries, developer of the Bradley fighting vehicle.

The valley is on the fringe of the strongly Democratic San Francisco bay area, one of the cradles of the anti-war movement.

Later Friday, Bush was to pick up Australian Prime Minister John Howard for a weekend summit at Bush's Texas ranch. The president was swinging through Arkansas on his way back to Washington on Monday.