Bush to Visit GIs in Gulf : President Will Tour Bases in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving

President Bush will visit American troops in the Persian Gulf on Thanksgiving Day, the White House announced today.

Bush will travel to Saudi Arabia, also stopping in Egypt, after a trip to Paris for the Nov. 19-21 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

Bush will leave Nov. 16 and return to Washington Nov. 23.

Details of the trip were disclosed while Bush was on a final campaign swing to the Midwest and West Coast. First Lady Barbara Bush is expected to accompany the President on the visit to the Middle East and Europe.

Fitzwater said the Nov. 22 visit with the troops will cap an eight-day trip by the President with stops in Paris; Prague, Czechoslovakia; and unidentified cities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Fitzwater said Bush will travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt for consultations on the gulf crisis with Saudi’s King Fahd and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak. He also will meet with Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, who has lived in exile in Taif, Saudi Arabia, since Iraq invaded and annexed his country Aug. 2.

The exact places where Bush will stop in the Middle East were apparently being withheld for security reasons.

Bush campaigned for Republican candidates today in Ohio. In Cincinnati, he mixed themes of war, peace and politics, promising to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait while holding out the hope of bringing U.S. troops home “without a shot being fired.”

Bush told a GOP rally: “Let me be very clear. There cannot be any compromise” short of total Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.

Praising the more than 220,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Persian Gulf region, Bush said: “I’ll do my level best to bring every single one of them home without a shot being fired in anger. But we will not stop short of our stated objectives.”

“We are the United States of America. We are standing for principle. And that principle must prevail.”

It was the fourth day in a row that Bush has sought to press his verbal barrage against the Iraqi leader.

But Bush said he had no apologies for raising the subject at one political rally after another as he seeks to provide last-minute help for GOP candidates in next Tuesday’s midterm elections.

“I’ll repeat it today, I’ll repeat it tomorrow and I’ll repeat it the next day,” Bush declared.