In what looked like one of the riskiest trips ever undertaken by a serving US president, Mr George Bush yesterday flew onto a moving aircraft carrier in the Pacific as a front seat passenger in an anti-submarine jet aircraft.
The US President had selected the USS Abraham Lincoln with its 5,000 sailors and marines to provide a dramatic backdrop for a televised speech to the nation announcing the end of major military operations in Iraq.
The huge warship with its 4.5 acre deck was approaching San Diego after 10 months in action, and was too far out to sea for Mr Bush to use a helicopter.
The four-person Navy S-3B Viking plane carrying Mr Bush did a fly-pass of the carrier with its wing-tips almost touching a second Viking carrying the White House chief of staff, Mr Andrew Card before landing on the deck where it was hooked by cables and came to a halt in three seconds.
Mr Bush emerged from the cabin in a green jump suit with his helmet under his arm, and posed with the flight crew, providing images that observers said would have a powerful patriotic impact in the next presidential election campaign. Throughout the war Mr Bush has chosen military backgrounds for the setting of most of his speeches.
"Never can tell what's going to kick in," Mr Bush, a former pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, joked to reporters before making the trip. Asked if he would take over the controls himself, he replied, "Let me just say, stay clear of the landing pattern." Officials said that the 20-minute flight was not that dangerous, pointing out that a total of 16,500 sorties were launched from the Lincoln deck in missions over Iraq and Afghanistan without the loss of a plane or a personnel.
Mr Bush was briefed beforehand on how to eject from the plane, named "Navy One" for the occasion, and was given a short course on water survival.
His speech, scheduled to be broadcast at 6.00 Pacific Time (2 a.m. Irish time), was planned as a counterpoint to the one Mr Bush gave six weeks ago when he informed the nation that the war had begun with the mission of targeting Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, finding weapons of mass destruction and liberating the Iraqi people.
The theatrical setting symbolised victory, though that word was carefully omitted from Mr Bush's text.
The mission of the US-led forces in Iraq has yet to be fully achieved. No unconventional weapons have been found and Mr Hussein has not been captured.
A declaration of the end of the war would require the US, under the Geneva Convention, to release the thousands of Iraqi prisoners captured in the last six weeks and designate the US as the occupying power. It would impose international-law obligations on the American military.
The speech was a way to formally proclaim that the military operation had improved the security of the United States and brought freedom to the Iraqi people after three decades of a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, officials said.
Mr Bush wanted to underline the striking US-British military success in toppling the regime in four weeks, and to give Americans a sense of finality to the air and ground war and prepare for the next phase of reconstruction.
"The President is giving the speech now because of the successful operations that have been carried out, the significant accomplishments in achieving the mission, and because he wants to explain to the American people, having risked lives and treasure in pursuit of our goals in Iraq, what the present results are," White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer said.