Commander-in-Chief beats familiar rallying drum to reassure a nation

He has been drawn and sombre in most of his public appearances since war began. But yesterday George Bush was back where he feels most comfortable, revving up adoring troops like a winning coach during "March Madness", the college basketball play-offs currently competing with Iraq for airtime.

The Commander-in-Chief of course was never going to get anything but a friendly welcome at MacDill Air Force base in Florida, home of US Central Command, whose boss, General Tommy Franks, is on temporary transfer to Qatar to wrap up some pressing regional business. Yesterday, the troops and their families, assembled in a hangar to hear their President, cheered and whooped his every utterance. Mr Bush, needless to say, broke no new ground. This relentlessly on-message President beat the familiar drums: "freedom" for the Iraqi people, as the "day of reckoning draws near" for the "doomed regime" in Baghdad. Each time they cheered.

Republican Guard units were "under direct and intense" attack, he went on as flickers of the smirk that is among his least attractive characteristics began to mix with presidential gravitas. "We will stay on the path, mile by mile, all the way to Baghdad and all the way to victory." The applause was thunderous.

But this cheerleading had a deadly serious purpose, to reassure his jittery country that America was winning – and not winning alone. Britain and the US might be at the sharp end on the battlefield. But Saddam Hussein will doubtless be alarmed, and Americans comforted, by the revelation that a Danish submarine is now monitoring Iraqi intelligence and that forces from Bulgaria and other former Soviet satellites in the "new Europe" are on standby to help in the event of a chemical attack.

Iraqi civilians will surely be comforted by Mr Bush's reference to the "deadly precision" of US weaponry and his desire to protect the innocent – at the very moment 14 Iraqi civilians were killed in a Baghdad street by what residents claimed was a US missile. Most telling, however, was what Mr Bush didn't say. Earlier, his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said the President would refer to the campaign being "ahead of schedule". But the Commander-in-Chief scratched out that phrase on the flight down on Air Force One. "The military are making good progress," Mr Bush finally told the troops. And they duly raised the roof.

And something else changed on Air Force One. Respecting the demands of the parallel war against that perfidious one-time ally, France, the steward has changed the breakfast menu. It now features "freedom toast" – "eggy bread" as it is known to aficionados in Britain, but called "French toast" here, until Jacques Chee-rack got uppity.