President Bush talked to some U.S. troops in Iraq earlier on live TV as part of an effort to trumpet the upcoming Iraqi vote on that nation’s proposed constitution. The president’s conversation with the troops went just as planned, due at least in part to the fact that the troops Bush spoke with were coached by Allison Barber, Bush’s deputy assistant defense secretary, on what the president would ask them and how they should respond.

News reports are so far not as critical of the staged event as I figure they will be in print tomorrow morning. (And I’m not so dumb that I don’t realize this sort of coaching is utterly normal; it’s just not the sort of thing you want to get caught doing. Nor is it something the media will tolerate, and certainly not from this lying sack of low poll numbers.)

The indispensable Crooks & Liars has video, although their clip also doesn’t do the staging justice. (I have no complaints, though, since CNN’s utterly scrumptious Suzanne Malveaux reports.)

According to the AP, an Iraqi soldier who took part in the Q&A did his best Harriet Miers impersonation. “Thank you very much for everything,” he told Bush. “I like you.”

[Cross-posted at To the People, where when Dubya says "Jump," we ask, "How high (are you)?"]

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 7:40 pm by Baylen Linnekin and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.