tellhimfred.com

Yesterday, a “conversation with U.S. troops” was exposed to show that questions from the President and the answers were scripted.

Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary was seen coaching the troops in a live shot before the performance was supposed to be shown.

“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?” she asked.

Source- Yahoo

I don’t find this surprising, as the administration consistently scripts question and answer sessions. What I do find surprising is the level of incompetence involved. The administration obviously didn’t want the world to see this, even if it wasn’t something new.

So how did this happen?

PS- I received two comments that missed the point completely here. One of them took the age old republican angle of “John Kerry scripted Q&A sessions during his campaign.”

Right. Um, where do I mention John Kerry here? Where do I say that Democrats are infallible here? I just did a search, and I can’t find a result for either of those points.

I don’t understand why Republicans can’t even see that something went wrong here. We saw something we weren’t supposed to see. And that’s all I’m saying here. How could this happen?

The other comment said that I was making this up. They questioned my source. The source, in this case, is Yahoo News, pulling from the Associated Press in an article entitled “Bush Thanks Soldiers in Rehearsed Talk“. The comment also said that there is considerable lag in a teleconference, and because of that, there was nothing staged.

Uh…..hmm. Just turn on the national news and watch it. It has nothing to do with being a videoconference. A live shot came on showing the soldiers being prepped.

And please, if you want to disagree with me, leave your email address when you comment. It’s hard to discuss an issue with someone who remains anonymous.