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Letter: Bush’s Iraq visit sadly contrived

Thursday, Dec. 4, 2003 | 9:07 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan's tribute to George W. Bush for sharing Thanksgiving dinner with the troops is misguided.

First of all, Bush's appearance in Baghdad was, as Mr. O'Callaghan admits, yet another grand photo opportunity for a president who artfully avoided Vietnam while 58,000 other Americans, not so privileged, died. The president's Thanksgiving photo op was similar to his landing on an aircraft carrier in full flight regalia.

The worst of O'Callaghan's praising Bush, however, is that he does so knowing that each day an American soldier dies, for no apparent reason other than "nation building," in a region that is at best chaotic, that each day we further humiliate and kill innocent Iraqis, creating yet more terrorists, that there are no "weapons of mass destruction" and that al-Qaida and Saddam were never blood brothers.

Bush's visit to Iraq -- for two hours -- was superficial and sadly contrived to win the hearts of the ill informed and unsuspecting.

JOHN H. ESPERIAN

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