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Barack Obama launched his week-long world tour with a brief stop in Kuwait and then began a longer visit to Afghanistan, ahead of planned stops in Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England. The highly anticipated trip was launched in secrecy, with Obama’s campaign refusing to confirm that he had left the country, citing security reasons. The campaign announced early Saturday morning that Obama was on the ground in Kabul, Afghanistan.The U.S. military later said Obama was greeting U.S. troops at Jalalabad airfield in eastern Afghanistan. Obama made a secret stop in Kuwait and visited U.S. service members, then flew on to Kabul.Obama and his party also met with troops and military brass at the huge Bagram Air Base, according to reporters on the ground.The stops in Afghanistan and a later visit to Iraq are part of a congressional trip that includes Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). Mark Lippert, foreign policy adviser in Obama’s Senate office, was the only staff member who accompanied him on the congressional delegation trip, the campaign said. Lippert had returned in the late spring from a tour of duty in Iraq as a naval reservist. A blogger briefly posted word Friday that Obama was in Kuwait, but the campaign refused to confirm it and the post was removed. The campaign had not given the dates of the trip, insisting that the press refer to it as “upcoming.”The later two stops in the Middle East and the three stops in Western Europe are part of a separate campaign trip that will include a full plane of press and staff. The campaign said Friday that Obama will meet with a huge slate of world leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, King Abdullah of Jordan, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni, Israeli Likud Party Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Robert Gibbs, the campaign’s senior strategist for communications and message, announced the beginning of the trip with a 3:24 a.m. e-mail to reporters: “At approximately 3:15 AM Eastern/2:15 AM Central, I received a phone call telling me that Sen. Obama had landed at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Since leaving Washington on Thursday, Sen. Obama had stopped and visited troops in Kuwait.” That was followed by a 1,000-word pool report by the Chicago Tribune’s John McCormick that covered Obama’s movement to Washington, where he dropped the pool. Obama’s small traveling party flew from Chicago to Washington on a Gulfstream III (G-III) on Thursday, then took a military plane from Andrews Air Force Base. The G-III was hot when the party boarded, and the pool report by McCormick says Obama made a joke about the upcoming desert weather. “We’re just easing you into it,” Obama told the Secret Service agents accompanying him. Obama was accompanied on the flight to Washington by eight Secret Service agents; just one staff member, senior adviser Linda Douglass, his traveling spokesperson; and two reporters — McCormick and Glen Johnson of The Associated Press. Obama read The New York Times on the flight to Washington, then paused for the reporters to ask him what he hoped to learn on the mission. “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is,” he said. “I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense, both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what the most, ah, their biggest concerns are. And I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they’ve been doing.” McCormick says the senator then was asked whether he plans to deliver some tough talk to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about doing more to stand up as the instruments of self-governance in their own nations. “Well, you know, I’m more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking,” Obama replied. “And I think it is very important to recognize that I’m going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time, so it’s the president’s job to deliver those messages.” Obama left Andrews at about 3:17 p.m. Thursday. The campaign said Reed and Hagel were aboard.By MIKE ALLEN
As in the days of Noah....
