HERE WE GO AGAIN
By Jack Kus

** George W. Bush visits Fort Lewis; local press agog **

United for Peace of Pierce County
June 14, 2004

The president of the United States is coming to Fort Lewis. Pretty neat, huh? The News Tribune of Tacoma thinks so. It's all agog. [1]

And what a coincidence. George W. Bush is going to do pretty much the same thing that Dick Cheney did in December!

More on the coincidence later. First, let's talk about the president's trip.

President Bush'll fly all the way across the country to Washington in that big fancy plane of his -- you know, the one you got to marvel at back in 1997 in that movie where Harrison Ford shows what a really tough guy an American president has to be.

Just think -- he'll be so close to us! Wouldn't it be neat to see him?

Too bad you can't.

But don't complain. I mean, you could see him, if you really wanted to.

You could fork out some big bucks to go to dinner with him, after all.

Don't have the money for that? Well, I hear they're looking for a few good men -- and women -- down at the recruitment station.

As for the rest of you, I know you may be paying for the trip with your taxes, and I know the reason he gets to fly around like that is because you elected the guy -- that's a sore point for some of you; shouldn't you just get over it? -- but the real point of the president's trip (like most of his trips, really) is to go schmooze with his real constituents.

In this case, that means fat cats happy to shake his hand and true believers eager just to be in the presence of their divine warrior (just read Rev. 19:11-16 -- I mean, isn't it obvious it's him?) at a posh gourmet fundraising dinner in Spokane for the Republican candidate trying to unseat Sen. Patty Murray.

Nethercutt.

But even if you're president, you can't just fly around free to fundraising dinners in Air Force One. You're supposed to be on the people's business when you do that.

So, to justify billing us taxpayers, the president will show what a man of the people is -- as long as the people are wearing some kind of uniform, not that he was so eager to put on a uniform back when he had the chance -- and eat some succotash the next day with a few hundred of the poor souls who volunteered to devote themselves to defending the nation and who he's sent to do God knows what God knows why in that hot-as-hell nether world he created for "Generation Kill" to play in over there on the other side of the planet.

Since he'll be at Fort Lewis, chances are good he'll spend some time watching one of his new Stryker brigades strutting its stuff.

Chances are not good he'll mention that the Strykers were an idea of Gen. Eric Shinseki's, inspired by some French military equipment the general glimpsed in Europe in the 1990s.

'Cause you remember Gen. Shinseki -- he's the one who said it would take at least 250,000 troops to secure Iraq after a military victory. "No way," said Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

"Way," says your daily newspaper, every damn time you look at it these days.

Say, isn't it funny that Rummy still has the president's confidence? But then the president always listens at those no-notes-taken weekly lunches with Dick Cheney, and Dick Cheney's whole career has been based on following Don Rumsfeld's lead.

But that's another story. Back to the News Tribune's report on the president's visit to Fort Lewis.

You know, it's funny. It doesn't strike the News Tribune as odd that the president doesn't talk to the people he's supposed to represent – the people of the United States. Or that in this election year, that he doesn't make a speech appealing for votes.

I suppose he doesn't want to endanger anyone by appearing in public. He's so concerned about our security and all.

After all, there's a war going on – a war on terrorism. And we have lots of dangerous characters out here in the Northwest. You've read about them.

There's the poor bozo they entrapped into saying something anti-American in an on-line chat room a few months back.

There's Brandon Mayfield, that dangerous Portland lawyer the FBI was 100% sure was a material witness to the Madrid bombing, when he hadn't been out of the country in years. The poor guy happened to be a Muslim -- of course that had nothing to do with it. The FBI said so.

And then there's Capt. James Yee. You remember him. He's been on the front pages quite a bit. Definitely another dangerous character -- or so they thought for a while at Gitmo. Now they say they were wrong. Still. I'll bet they've got their doubts. After all, the guy is a Muslim. And uh-oh: he works at Fort Lewis! They'll probably give him Thursday and Friday off, just to be on the safe side.

All things considered, I guess we should be grateful the president isn't making any public appearances. Safer for everybody.

I guess it's so obvious the News Tribune doesn't really need to mention it.

Another thing the News Tribune doesn't really need to mention, either, is that, since he's out here, President Bush might think of working in a visit to some of the families of the fifteen Washington State residents serving in the U.S. military who have died in Iraq: Justin Hebert of Arlington, Chris Bunda of Bremerton, Curt Jordan Jr. of Green Acres, Ben Colgan of Kent, Jake Herring and Jim Shull of Kirkland, Cody Calavan of Lake Stevens, Jeff Shaver of Maple Valley, Kerry Scott of Mount Vernon, Mike Adams of Seattle, Nathan Nakis of Sedro-Wooley, Bob Benson of Spokane, Duane Longstreth of Tacoma, Cedric Bruns of Vancouver, or Dustin Sides of Yakima.

But that might appear too critical. Too disrespectful.

God knows -- God knows -- you should be respectful of the president. Isn't this a Christian nation, for God's sake?

And anyway, our loyal local press is always agog when visitors from High Officialdom from the Nation's Capital -- where they have the National Cathedral and all and while I'm mentioning it wasn't that a moving funeral? -- when officers, I say, from the new Rome deign to grace this little province of the empire with a visit.

Even when they order us to put our longtime neighbors into concentration camps for no reason at all, like back in 1942, we listen respectfully and say: they're from the real Washington. They must know best.

They've earned our gratitude, those folks in the other Washington, with all the good things they've brought this way, like the 1,760 nuclear warheads at Naval Submarine Base Bangor just up the road.

Giving the War Department (as they called it back then) all that land for Fort Lewis turned out to be a pretty good investment, you could say!

It's unseemly to bite the hand that feeds you, after all.

I really only noticed how polite and respectful our loyal local press is last December. I took it into my head then to review the reports when Backseat -- as the Secret Service oh-so-appropriately dubbed Dick Cheney when he was working in the Ford administration thirty years ago, tending to the White House's toilets and saltcellars (or as he called them in a memo, "little dishes of salt with funny little spoons" (guess they don't use those in Wyoming) -- swung through Fort Lewis and Bellevue, I think it was.

Maybe you remember: Dick Cheney flew into Fort Lewis -- on the same mission (raising money for George Nethercutt's campaign to unseat Democratic senator Patty Murray), but the *News Tribune* has forgotten about that. Though guess what: Cheney's visit to the troops had the same purpose: tacking on a little visit with the troops. Exactly the same thinking: let you, the taxpayers, be billed for the trip, not that you should get even a minute of access. I mean, really: this is the vice president and the president of the United States of America we're talking about, for Chrissake.

If you're lucky, you might see their stately planes moving across the sky.

Ah, America. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. All men are created equal. The unfinished work. The great task remaining before us. So that the dead shall not have died in vain.

A new birth of freedom.

All that stuff the president thinks about as he puts on his flag lapel pin every morning.

1.

PRESIDENT TO VISIT FORT LEWIS, AND THIS TIME IT'S NO SECRET
By Mike Gilbert

News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
June 14, 2004

http://www.tribnet.com/news/iraq/stryker/story/5191241p-5123928c.html

Fort Lewis, especially lately, has become a regular stop for high-level VIPs.

The secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the Army, ranking members of Congress -- they've all passed through during the past couple of years to check on the progress of the Stryker brigades.

The commander in chief? He doesn't drop by very often. But President Bush plans to do so later this week.

It's been 62 years since the last-known visit by a U.S. president to Fort Lewis.

Franklin D. Roosevelt made a secret trip to the post in September 1942, part of a two-week swing through Puget Sound to check on the region's military installations and war factories.

Just 10 months into this country's involvement in World War II and with fresh concern about a Japanese strike on the West Coast, the White House persuaded area newspapers to withhold the story until the president was safely back in Washington, D.C.

Things aren't quite as hush-hush for Bush's scheduled visit to the post late Thursday. He's expected to arrive after a campaign fund-raising appearance in Spokane for U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Patty Murray.

Bush will stay the night, then visit with troops first thing Friday morning, the White House said late last week. After that, he'll be off to an appearance in Reno on Friday afternoon.

Fort Lewis officials declined Thursday and Friday to talk about the president's possible itinerary. But there's no shortage of folks for him to visit:

•There are more than 1,000 soldiers who have returned from long combat tours in Iraq.

•There are some 400 troops getting ready to leave soon for the Middle East, in some cases for their second trip.

•The 5,000 or so troops of the Army's second Stryker brigade are getting ready to go to Iraq in the fall.

•And there are thousands of family members who have loved ones in Iraq with the first Stryker brigade.

Post officials said they'd say more about the visit later this week in coordination with the White House.

Various presidents are believed to have passed through McChord Air Force Base on their visits to the Pacific Northwest, and Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to service members there Dec. 23.

But a presidential visit at the West Coast's largest Army installation is indeed a rare thing, according to a quick survey of the Fort Lewis Military Museum, the Northwest Room of the Tacoma Public Library, The News Tribune archive and various other resources.

President Bush's father came close: On Feb. 6, 1990, he spoke to soldiers from the old Fort Lewis-based 3rd Brigade, 9th Infantry Division - except they were at Fort Irwin, Calif., for training at the time.

Harry Truman visited Fort Lewis in 1958, five years after leaving office, to check in on his cousin, Maj. Gen. Louis Truman, who was commander of the 4th Infantry Division at the time.

The former president played a duet on the piano with his cousin's mother-in-law and reviewed the troops, then off he went to California, according to the online archives of the Truman Library.

As president, Truman passed through Fort Lewis in June 1948 while on a tour of severe flooding across the Northwest - but he did not stop to visit the base.

Of all the presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower spent by far the most time at Fort Lewis - as a soldier, not as the commander in chief. He was a lieutenant colonel and chief of staff of the IX Army Corps at the post from March to June 1941.

Roosevelt's secret visit to Fort Lewis was actually the second tour of the post in his presidency. He passed through in October 1937 on his way home from a car tour of the Olympic Peninsula.

According to news accounts, the entire garrison lined Pacific Highway and saluted as the president's motorcade passed by. At that time, however, there were only about 2,000 soldiers stationed there.

By the time he returned five years later, there were more than 37,000 troops training at the post as the Army rushed to prepare soldiers for World War II.

He spent all morning Sept. 22 at the post meeting commanders and reviewing the troops before heading over on the Narrows ferry to check out the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.

Although word of the president's visit spread quickly - newspaper switchboards lit up with callers wanting to know if that was really FDR they just saw drive by – the press agreed to the White House's request that the news not be reported until later.

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921
mike.gilbert@mail.tribnet.com

SIDEBAR: Bush's visit

THURSDAY

• Fund-raising dinner in Spokane at 6:30 p.m. for George Nethercutt's campaign for the U.S. Senate seat
• Arrives at Fort Lewis after dinner and will spend the night

FRIDAY

• Meets with troops at 8 a.m.
• Leaves for Reno in early afternoon