Bush back from surprise Iraq trip BBC NEWS

The BBC’s David Bamford, in Washington, says that politically speaking, this was a spectacularly well-planned event, one year ahead of presidential elections.

In America the visit is being hailed as a public-relations coup that was a central topic of conversation around the nation’s Thanksgiving dinner tables.

The Washington Post described it as the third key image of the Bush presidency – alongside Mr Bush with a loudhailer atop the rubble at Ground Zero, and the president declaring the war on Iraq a “mission accomplished” on board the USS Abraham Lincoln in May.

But it adds that “it is too soon to know whether the image of Bush in his Army jacket… will become a symbol of strong leadership or a symbol of unwarranted bravado”.