Bush to Spend Thanksgiving With U.S. Troops in Gulf : Mideast: The trip will put an American President in a potential war zone for the first time since 1966, when Lyndon Johnson visited Vietnam.

President Bush will spend Thanksgiving with U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, the White House announced Friday.

The trip will put an American President in a zone of potential warfare for the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson made a 2 1/2-hour visit to Vietnam on Oct. 26, 1966, during the height of the U.S. involvement in the war there.

Bush will leave Washington on Nov. 16 at the start of an eight-day trip to Europe and the Middle East. He will meet in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak and in Saudi Arabia with King Fahd, the Saudi monarch, and the exiled emir of Kuwait, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah.

The presidential visit to Saudi Arabia will be the first since Jimmy Carter visited Riyadh in January, 1978.

Meanwhile, during a stop Friday to campaign for Ohio Republican candidates, Bush promised to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait while at the same time holding out hope that the United States could bring its troops home “without a shot being fired.”

Bush also told a Republican rally: “Saddam Hussein must get out, and he must get out totally, and the legitimate rulers must be returned.”

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

Hussein has refused to let many foreigners leave Iraq and Kuwait, in an attempt to deter an attack.

Meanwhile, the State Department said it was discouraging those Americans whom the Iraqi president invited to visit their relatives held hostage in the gulf.

“Saddam Hussein is using Americans and other nationals as pawns in a cruel game,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said at a news briefing.

“Iraq’s cynical trafficking in human beings should be exposed for what it is--an attempt to exploit for propaganda purposes the illegal detention of Americans and other citizens,” Tutwiler said.

Representatives of Hussein’s government have invited members of hostage families and prominent Americans to visit Iraq, Tutwiler said, but she declined to identify any of those who have been invited.

Washington discourages such visits on the grounds that they would be used for Iraqi propaganda purposes, and because Iraq might offer to free some hostages in return for statements of opposition to United Nations resolutions condemning Baghdad, Tutwiler said.

However, the United States would not forbid Americans to visit relatives who are held hostage, said a U.S. official who asked not to be identified.

“How in the world can the United States government say to some mother, ‘You can’t do this’? But we are definitely discouraging it,” Tutwiler said.

She said the United States wants to supply blankets and warmer clothing to “human shields” with the onset of cooler weather in the gulf, but needs assurances that these supplies will actually reach foreigners held captive.

Washington also wants to get supplies to the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City, where water and power have been cut.

Those who wish to accept Iraq’s invitation must apply to the U.S. Treasury Department for a permit, since a trip to Iraq would require the purchase of an Iraqi airline ticket and other expenses, in violation of U.S. economic sanctions against Baghdad.

The British Foreign Office also asked relatives not to go, but 10 wives of British hostages said they will fly to Iraq this week to seek their husbands’ freedom. Other relatives welcomed Iraq’s offer to let them visit at Christmas.

Iraq Friday presented several American, Japanese and British hostages to try to dispel rising Western criticism of their treatment. Diplomats in Baghdad said four American hostages in Iraq will probably be freed over the weekend.

A U.S. official in Baghdad Friday identified the four as Randall Trinh, 49, of Hacienda Heights, Calif.; Dr. Abdul Kangi, 50, of Glencoe, Ill., a Chicago suburb; Raymond Gales, a diplomat stationed in Kuwait and now in Baghdad; and Michael Barnes.

Trinh, a Vietnamese-American, is suffering from an acute ulcer and Gales had unspecified medical problems, the official said on condition of anonymity.

No details were given on Barnes and it was not known whether Kangi, an Indian-American, was sick.

Reporters were escorted to a strategic site about 60 miles north of Baghdad and were allowed to interview 10 foreigners with Iraqi officials standing nearby. The captives said they eagerly want to go home but denied reports that they are being underfed or mistreated by their guards.

“I love freedom. When I get out of this and go home, I’ll go to the beaches and have a nice swim,” said Clem J. Hall, 57, an educator from Takoma Park, Md.

The hostages said they received messages from their families over the BBC and the Voice of America radio.

“The BBC messages keep us sane. Without them, we could not have heard anything from them,” said Leon Corral, 45, of Britain.

Thousands of foreigners, including about 1,000 Americans, remain in Iraq and Kuwait. Iraq has selectively freed hundreds of them. The latest mass release was of about 300 French nationals last week.

In other developments:

* Arrangements were under way to provide postal services to Americans held against their will in Iraq, said Steven Richards, deputy executive director of the American Red Cross. He spoke in Amman, Jordan, where he said an agreement was expected in meetings over the weekend with officials from the Jordanian and Iraqi Red Crescent.

* Boxer Thomas (Hit Man) Hearns entertained U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia with verbal jabs and mock sparring at the start of an eight-day World USO tour. Hearns, autographing helmet liners, called the soldiers “the true fighters.”

“I know what I’m facing when I step in that boxing ring,” he said. “They don’t have any idea what’s in store for them.”