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Trip Notes from the Middle East
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We arrived in Abu Dhabi late Sunday morning, and were surprised to find it was raining. After a lavish lunch, the motorcade took us to the fabled Emirates Palace Hotel. The place looks like something out of a dream ... my room literally has about as much floor space as my house ... and the atrium, under a dome said to be as large as St. Paul's in London, is something to behold. The floors are all marble with beautiful inlay, the bathrooms have a giant tub you have to climb up steps to get to, and our hosts have left platters of chocolates, cookies, and dates. The best description is what I hear people whispering: Everything that looks like it's gold, is.
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In this hotel, the President gave the only formal speech of the trip. The nuts and bolts of a speech delivered abroad are sometimes different from a speech given at home. For this one, we had a draft to him by Monday that had gone through the usual staffing. But we had changes all the way – here tweaking the language on Lebanon, there updating the section on the Holy Land to reflect developments from the meetings with Prime Minister Olmert or President Abbas, here again sharpening the message to the people of Iran.
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On yesterday's flight to Bahrain, Ed Gillespie, Steve Hadley, and I went up to the President’s cabin to talk about the quote at the end of the speech from an Arab American named Ameen Rihani, discussing the Statue of Liberty. I first found the quote in Michael Oren's book "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present." Oren notes that Bartholdi originally designed what became the Statue of Liberty for the Suez Canal, and when we looked up the books in his footnotes, one had a picture of that design -- which we showed the President. If I remember correctly, Bartholdi later denied any connection between the two, probably afraid of being accused of just recycling an old plan. But when you see the picture of the original plan, it looks almost exactly like Lady Liberty – except that the light comes out of the crown instead of the torch.
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Anyway, it's good to have the speech over. And there's a nice reward. As a rule, I've found that those times when I'm spending a lot of time in a room and could use the extra space – like when I'm traveling with my family – the smaller and more disappointing the accommodations. By contrast, those times when I get a suite the size of a small city, I'm by myself and staying for only a few hours. But I have a small treat tonight. Since I'm not on the list for the official dinner tonight, it leaves me a few free hours that will allow me to become more closely acquainted with all the amenities that a $3 billion hotel has to offer.