"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"
"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.
"Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.
"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.
And so it went.
"If the question comes up about partnering — how often do we train with the Iraqi military — who does he go to?" Barber asked.
"That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said.
"And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit — the hometown — and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" Why is it that no matter how many times they get busted for it, the Bush administration just can't stop manufacturing the news by staging supposedly spontaneous interactions between the president and "just folks?" (including "just troops"...?) And why is it that they consistently do it so very badly? Bush looked like a kid who showed up on class presentation day with his big brother's paper from last year. And what's with the stepford grins on the faces of the hand-picked "audience" for this audience with the king? Could this thing have been more freaking awkward??? (NBC video: Troops coached ahead of Bush rally)
If things are going south this quickly with things just at the grand jury stage, what's gonna happen if Rove actually gets indicted, or worse yet, goes to prison? Are these clowns gonna send Dubya out on the South Lawn without his pants on or what...? By the way, according to Operation Truth's Paul Rieckhoff, five of the ten "just troops" Bush bantered with were officers. And then there was this guy:
The president also got praise from the Iraqi soldier who was part of the chat.
"Thank you very much for everything," he gushed. "I like you." Yeah, he likes you too, buddy. Sheesh... Update: Oh, so this is why they keep doing it ... I guess there's a suck-up wire reporter under every bedroll...
Tags: Iraq, Middle East, War, Foreign Policy, Media |
