Anybody following the vital events in the war on terrorism knows that George Bush secretly flew to Iraq on Thanksgiving day to serve turkey to some 600 US soldiers at the Baghdad airport. While this secret trip doesn't quite measure up to other secret trips in international diplomacy, like Kissinger's surprise journey to China, Roosevelt's voyage to Casablanca during WWII, or Bush Sr.'s secret flight to France to convince the Iranians holding US hostages to keep holding them hostage until after the 1980 elections, just remember: each person can only do the best they can with what they've got.

And while some might criticize Bush for only spending two and a half hours in Baghdad while pretending that he did something really heroic, with his famously short attention span and aversion to military service, that 150 minutes must have seemed like a whole tour of duty. (Come to think of it, that was probably the sum total of the time he didn't spend AWOL during his Vietnam "duty.")

The Iraq trip was Bush's follow-up to his recent visit to England, where he personally delivered a turkey to his most loyal employee, Tony Blair. Unfortunately, the Littlest Caesar was forced to go into hiding in Buckingham Palace after thousands of pro-democracy Brits jubilantly toppled a large George Bush statue.

Speaking to the British people during his trip, Bush insisted that the world was now a much better place now that Saddam Hussein is no longer "strutting and killing." Immediately after the speech, Bush returned to his normal routine of strutting and killing. But allowing that Brits (except for members of Tony Blair's cabinet) have a right to express their political opinions, Bush announced that the tradition of free speech is "alive and well" in England and added, "they now have that right in Baghdad as well." He declined to announce a timetable for when that right would be available in Miami.

Isolated as he was behind high walls and the tightest security ever seen in London, Bush was unable to hear British protesters shouting "Bush go home." And due to the large expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, he was even more out of earshot of the people on the American side shouting, "Bush stay in England."

Apparently announcing a new strategy in the Crusade against terror, Bush said that the only way to deal with terrorists was to bring them to justice. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden remains at large, while Guantanamo Bay is full of suspected terrorists so far safely out of reach of the US justice system.

After Bush had departed, the people of England spent a day giving thanks that they had shipped most of their fundamentalist Christian fanatics to America centuries ago.

Proving that he is Bush's equal in every respect, Democratic presidential contender Senator Joe Lieberman called the war in Iraq a battle to prevent "a global religious war." All attempts to make any sense out of this statement have so far failed utterly.

And the LA Times, perhaps concerned that they have not been fair and balanced in a sufficiently patriotic fashion, recently instituted a policy whereby Iraqis resisting the US occupation can not be called, "resistance fighters." While that Times memo announcing the new policy admits that the term is "not inaccurate," it unfortunately "romanticizes the work and goals of those killing GIs" who are occupying their country. The memo says that the terms "insurgents," and "guerrillas," are "preferred in this context."

At least they didn't insist that the Iraqi resistance guerrillas be called "terrorist insurgents." No word yet on whether the LA Times intends to correct the unfortunate romantic connotations of "coalition forces," when the term, "US and British troops occupying Iraq," probably ought to be preferred in this context.

Bush himself has, to his credit, so far avoided dismissing the Iraqi guerrilla insurgents as just another "focus group."