Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Think at your own risk.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

What's up, Doc?

The right is defending that staged Bush "teleconference with the troops," but just how many public affairs officers does it take to screw up a propaganda video...?

Michelle Malkin, Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds and others have made much of a blog entry by Army SGT. Ron Long, a combat medic serving in Iraq who was one of the soldiers who participated in that stilted videoconference chat with President Bush this week. Long, who blogs at They Call Us, "Doc", posted a response to all the "bashing" the spectacularly bad, staged event took in the MSM and in the blogosphere. Putting aside the fact that the media has, and has shown, the videotape of the interview prep, Long says in this post heard round the Iraq-war-supporting world, that all the troops (including five officers) did was prepare for a visit with their commander in chief:

First of all, we were told that we would be speaking with the President of the United States, our Commander-in-Chief, President Bush, so I believe that it would have been totally irresponsible for us NOT to prepare some ideas, facts or comments that we wanted to share with the President. We were given an idea as to what topics he may discuss with us, but it's the President of the United States; He will choose which way his conversation with us may go.

We practiced passing the microphone around to one another, so we wouldn't choke someone on live TV. We had an idea as to who we thought should answer what types of questions, unless President Bush called on one of us specifically. [emphases his]

Sgt. Long goes on to say that the president told the troops they were supported at home, but it sure doesn't read that way when the MSM insists on "rip(ping) down" the president and the troops morale by criticizing. He then links to a version of the video on the Pentagon channel (nope, no propaganda there...)

Okay, Sgt. Long. We've got a bead on you. But could you tell us a little bit more about the other troops, including apparently, five officers, who participated in the Iraq infomercial with you? How were the ten of you selected? And what about the female soldier from New York whom your commander in chief highlighted (and pretended to remember meeting after 9/11) during the "chat?" According to the Village Voice, Sgt. Corine Lombardo's job as a public affairs officer in Tikrit is to put on a good show for the press inside a fortified compound, not to participate in the training of Iraqi forces, as her canned answers to the president implied. Was she the only public affairs officer among you? And how, in your opinion, can she give the president a proper assessment of what's going on on the ground there? (HT to the folks at Iraq War News and Comment).

The Bush administration would never dream of staging "good news" from the troops fighting in Iraq, would they? Okay maybe they did that one time they sent the same glowing letter home from supposed soldiers in multiple hometowns... or when they sent a G.I. onto CNN to announce the start of a Fallujah offensive that wouldn't happen for three weeks ... or the staged Jessica Lynch rescue, or the lies about Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan or, hell, every broadcast about the war every night on Fox News (straight fromthe Pentagon -- leading me to wonder why bother creating a Pentagon channel ...?) Not to mention the biggest propaganda coup of the war, the staged "uprising" kicked off when a U.S. military vehicle pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussen in Firdus Square in Baghdad, with what looked like a huge crowd surrounding them... (see the back story here and here). But other than that, all the administration wants to do is disseminate the unvarnished truth to the American people. Right...? Right...?

Which is why the administration puts so much effort into cherry picking audiences and straining out dissenting voices to include only the most robotic Bush supporters and those willing to make exhortations of total, almost creepy devotion to the "commander in chief." (BTW Sgt., with all due respect, you wouldn't by any chance have been tasked by your commanding officer to post that blog entry, were you? Sorry, but your blog strikes me as an awfully sanitized view of the war...) I'm more inclined to buy into the candor of de-enlisted soliders like Paul Rieckhoff, who writes this on the OpTruth blog:

Not only were the teleconference troops told what to say by Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Allison Barber, they were also prevented from speaking freely by the looming threat of their ground commanders. Undoubtedly there was a PAO (Public Affairs Officer—likely someone ranking Major or higher) standing directly off-camera making sure the soldiers spoke in line with White House directives. Every troop presented an upbeat view of the situation on the ground in Iraq. There was no talk of armor issues or mortars attacks. A token Iraqi soldier in the group at one point gushed to President Bush, “Thank you very much for everything. I like you!”

When I was an Infantry Platoon leader in Iraq, I was interviewed by CBS 60 Minutes. As the tape was rolling, my commanding officer stood behind the camera carefully listening to my every word with his arms crossed. I knew it wouldn’t be fun for me if I strayed from the prescribed talking points. That incident was one of the motivating factors that led me to create Operation Truth--an organization that truly represents the candid voice of our troops and Veterans. The voices we heard today were neither candid nor representative.

Bottom line: this is the most secretive, propagandistic administration in modern memory. They thrive on press manipulation and obfuscation. They rarely deal in the plain truth. And they do all of this because to tell the truth about the war -- the reasons for it and the conduct of it -- would be to dissolve what little support for it is left among the American people. This is the same crowd that demanded that participants sign loyalty oaths in order to sit in the audiences for Bush's staged "town hall meetings" during the campaign (the Q&A was scripted in those, too).

And by the way, if the enemy had captured American soldiers and stuck a camera in front of their faces and had them read enemy-boosting propaganda to the world, we would be firing up the bunker busters. The president is misusing the armed forces by essentially turning them into tools for political propaganda (just as his administration has done repeatedly with the press and reminiscent of how they've politicized everything from the courts to FEMA.) Sorry Sgt. Long, I know you're a big-time Bush fan, but that isn't what the military you so bravely serve in is there for. Hell, even some Pentagon officials are peeved that soldiers were being coached before a supposedly spontaneous Q&A with the president. That's because they understand that the job of soldiers is to carry out U.S. foreign policy, not to propagandize for it.

Update: Rightie dears, comparing the staging of events with the troops by the president of the United States using the armed forces to the media or Cindy Sheehan is ... well ... kinda stupid. The media is the media... and Cindy Sheehan is a private citizen. If you folks don't hold your president to a higher standard than an individual mom or Michelle Kosinski, no wonder this country is in so much trouble... You might as well say Dubya is doing great if he just meets the Geraldo standard. Then again, maybe that's what you do say...

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