Reply #14: First Rice says:

[janx]

"Andy (Card), as he often does, said (to Bush) almost in passing: 'Thanksgiving's coming up. Where do you want to go? You want to go to Baghdad?"' Rice recalled, and the planning got under way.

Then:

Rice denied the trip was politically motivated. "This was generated out of the president and the policy side," she said, but declined to say if political adviser Karl Rove or Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman were among the handful of aides who knew about the trip.

And THEN:
"The (military) commanders still wanted this to go forward. And the president went around the room and just said, 'Do you still think this is the right thing to do?' And each of us thought it was the right thing to do," Rice said.

Why does Chimpy always toss her out there to handle the PR? She's terrible at it!