Now that the effect of the Thanksgiving-dinner booze has probably worn off for most people, let's take a look at what has been said in recent hours about certain people visiting Baghdad:

Bush had to be "prodded" to go to Iraq (link via The Poison Dart):

"For a president fond of a tough-guy image, George W. Bush was uneasy when an aide casually asked him, 'You want to go to Baghdad?'

With Bush safely back at his Crawford ranch on Friday, White House supporters seized on the U.S. Thanksgiving Day visit to Iraq as a public-relations coup that could boost troop morale and Republican fund raising.

But the trip -- one of the most secretive by any U.S. president -- also highlighted how precarious security remains in the Iraqi capital, captured by U.S. forces in April.

...

'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?"' [Condoleezza] Rice recalled, and the planning got under way."

This also from my "financial advisor" at The Poison Dart (via e-mail):

"On the Stock Market Newsgroups, the rightists of course were trying to trumpet what a big 'MAN' Bush was for [going to Baghdad], but a number of "investors" responded (and properly so), 'What if things had gone the other way and Bush got hit? [The] stock market would have crashed and chaos would ensue.' [In other words], the Chimp was taking a stupid risk for his own photo-op and RISKING EVERY INVESTOR'S MONEY in the process, when it needen't be so! ... I think that's a very good perspective: 'COWBOY does it again, putting everybody at risk with his shenanigans, only thinking of himself, even as he pretends to be doing something for others.'"

And this shocking admission by The Corner's Clifford D. May:

"Sen. Hillary Clinton also is in Iraq. So far, at least, she's not criticizing Bush. She's not saying the war was unjustified or a plot hatched in Texas. She's not dropping hints about how the U.S. could cut-and-run and make it look like an endorsement of the U.N. or of principled multilateralism.

Instead, she's praising the troops. She's praising the humanitarian effort. She's praising Coalition efforts to assist an Iraqi 'transition toward democracy.'

It's probably true that no one espousing such views can win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. But if you expect the Democratic candidate to be licking his wounds about this time next year, and if you have your eye on 2008, this is the smart play.

And it may be more than that. Not everyone on the Left is a post-humanitarian and an apologist for terrorism and Islamist totalitarianism. Could it be Hillary -- of all people --who leads the Left back from its current dance with the devil?" [Emphasis mine]

Clifford didn't really think she'd go over there and, perhaps, spit on the troops, did he? I mean, smart people learn from the mistakes of others instead of repeating them. Whatever Senator Clinton thinks of Bush's war, she obviously knows that the troops in Iraq should not be her sounding board for those views.