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10/14/2005: Late to the party again....
I actually got wind of the scripting of Bush's little gaggle with the troops yesterday (via email), but the person who sent it to me just cited NPR (he listens to NPR, a habit I gave up early in the Mess o'Potamia when it became clear to me that they'd pretty well sold out to become a part of the DoD Propaganda Department) without any citation to the Web. Fortunately, Josh Marshall provides a link (of sorts), so I can finally mention it:
Another great Bush administration moment.Um, here's a hint, guys.... Check that the mikes aren't live before the embarassing shit hits the fan.
In this morning's gaggle, Scott McClellan got asked whether the teleconference the president had with troops in Tikrit was scripted. Here's what he said ...QUESTION: How were they selected, and are their comments to the president pre-screened, any questions or anything...Here's how the pool report (i.e., from the designated reporter on the scene) described what happened.
MCCLELLAN: No.
QUESTION: Not at all?
MCCLELLAN: This is a back-and-forth.The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, "Who are we going to give that [question] to?"Oh well ...
In a sense, I'm sort of surprised that this is actually being remarked on as newsworthy. It's been obvious for years that Bush and his handlers simply can't handle anything remotely resembling a spontaneous event... his audiences are screened so that only the properly brainwashed sheep will bleat their praises of Our Glorious Leader, while they had to give a male escort press credentials so that he could throw batting practice fastballs to McClellan for him to try to hit out of the park....
Just business as usual.
Len on 10.14.05 @ 07:22 AM CST
