Ward Harklavy of the Village Voice has revealed that even more about President Bush’s October 13th videoconference with U.S. troops and an Iraqi soldier was staged than was apparent on the television screen.
In an embarrassing episode for the White House, television cameras captured a lengthy rehearsal of the teleconference with deputy assistant defense secretary Allison Barber coaching the soldiers before the arrival of the president.
Despite the captured-on-film moment the Pentagon denies that the event was staged, and Bush’s press secretary Scott McClellan insists that reporters who asked about the apparent staging of the event are getting caught up in “side issues.” “I think what the American people heard was some very important information from our men and women in uniform,”
One of the troops taking part in the teleconference was Master Sergeant Corrinne Lombardo who introduced herself simply as “Master Sergeant Corine Lombardo, with the Headquarters 42nd Infantry Division and Task Force Liberty, from Scotia, New York.” She told Bush:
SERGEANT LOMBARDO: I can tell you over the past 10 months we’ve seen a tremendous increase in the capabilities and the confidences of our Iraqi security force partners. We’ve been working side-by-side, training and equipping 18 Iraqi army battalions. Since we began our partnership, they have improved greatly, and they continue to develop and grow into sustainable forces. Over the next month, we anticipate seeing at least one-third of those Iraqi forces conducting independent operations…
Together with our coalition forces, we’ve captured over 50 terrorists, as well as detained thousands of others that have ties to the insurgency. And I believe it is these accomplishments and the numerous accomplishments from our task force that will provide a safe and secure environment for the referendum vote.
But a google search of Corine Lombardo turns up several articles written by her on official military sites (this one, for example). as well others where she is quoted (like here) as an official military spokeswoman. Ms. Lombardo, it seems, is a public affairs person attached to the 42nd Infantry Division. In other words, her job is public relations, helping to put a good face on our military efforts in Iraq.
Harklavy, in his Village Voice piece quotes his associate David Axe, who has covered Iraq for the Voice, and knows Sergeant Lombardo from having spent time in Tikrit.
Her job when I was with the 42nd Infantry Division included taking reporters to lunch.
She lives in a fortified compound in Tikrit and rarely leaves.
Many public-affairs types in Iraq never leave their bases, and they’re speaking for those who do the fighting and dying.
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A choreographed candid conversation
with the troops in Iraq – Maple Valley
soldier takes part in nationally televised
teleconference with President Bush
Yesterday I saw video on CNNi – big smiles – for all.
Is Arni coaching the Prez from Hollywood? Perhaps they prefer to change places. Arni could wear a different mask. CNNi showed only the part of Allison Barber addressing the choir boys in Tikrit!
CNNi was so nice to have video clip followed by Bill Schneider with the latest numbers ::
Poll Approve Disapprove
PEW 38% 56%
NBC 37% 54%
Q&A between reporter and BS to portray the 2nd term presidency as a lame duck, when approval numbers are below 40%. The dissent between WH and members of Congress will grow in the year to mid-term elections.
WOW – at last the MSM are joining the dissent!
Keep spreading the good word, and it will become the truth.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — President Bush gave a pep talk via teleconference to U.S. troops in Tikrit, telling them: “We’re never going to back down” without a “total victory” in Iraq.
Bush talked with 10 members of Task Force Liberty in Tikrit and an Iraqi soldier, who gave a positive assessment of the security situation and the training of Iraqi forces.
“When you e-mail your families, you tell them how proud the commander in chief is of their patience and their support as well,” Bush said.
The soldiers told the president Iraqi troops were ready to fight and that the Iraqi people seemed to be excited about the upcoming vote.
<snip>
Capt. Brent Kennedy told Bush the 42nd Infantry Division, lead unit for Task Force Liberty, is working with Iraqis to secure 1,250 polling sites in Iraq as part of “Operation Saratoga”.
Before the teleconference, Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense, went through a rehearsal of the scripted question-and-answer session, telling the troops that any non-scripted questions from the president should be handled by Kennedy.
When asked about the rehearsed event, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the coordination was done because of the “technological challenges” of a satellite feed. He denied responses had been screened.
Allison Barber in “Ask the White House” »»
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
We’re well past the Theatre of the Absurd so:
Scene Two Act Way Too Many:
Roameo: Hark! What brick through yon window breaks?
The Sun sets in the East and Juliet is mooned?
Juliet: Roameo, Roameo, Where the hell are you?
I’m freezing my butt off in this nightie,
the underwire pincheth,
and the night air invadedeth my “privacy.”
Roameo: Oh Juliet, the jig ith up-eth.
Our options impactedeth
The brown stuffeth hath hittedeth the windmilleth
Juliet: Oh, Roameo, art thou now Spanish?
Cut the crap and spit it out.
Roameo: We’re hosed.
Juliet: Tis plain and long dreaded.
Roameo: Caught in the act of making stuff up.
Vile reporters have been vilely reporting
that all this is but a stage and we but mere players.
Juliet: Oh, Roameo you’ve wandered into the wrong play.
Roameo: Alack, there is peril in the CBS eye
Twenty camera crews are now pointing at me
and we can not forestand their impartial gaze.
Juliet: Whadda mean “We” White Man?
‘Canary’ ist my middle name.
I’ve seen those enflickering pictures
and I ain’t about to go down in flames.
Not, at least, without pleading a bargin
Club Fed is better than 10 years in the pen.
(Exault All)
These guys know about Orwell. To some on the libertarian twig he’s a minor deity. They also claim to be the ones who are patriotic supporters of the troops. So how come we’re hearing nary a peep from these brave lovers of freedom when their heroic regime — and by no means for the first time — stages “news’ written and performed by PR hacks following Orwellian propaganda techniques to the letter? How come we hear no objection from the right when the troops they love so much are made into clownish puppets mouthing pathetic lies written by presidential flacks?
After the way they all got the vapors over Clinton’s little lie, how come they have no problem at all with probably the lyingest regime in this nation’s history? I guess it’s just part of the ideology of privatization. As long as your guys engage in serial lying written and delivered by professional liars, all is well. The right just can’t stand to see the amateurs invading their turf.
They can’t even put out polished propaganda and lies. Its freaking embarrassing. Makes you think that Rove is now out of the picture. Although looking back “Mission Accomplished” was a joke too and Rove was in the picture then. Please I have my standards if your going to manipulate me with bullshit propaganda at least make it somewhat believable.
I haven’t heard much news today at all, but I’d be very surprised if the MSM gives this much if any play. Truly the Bush gang made fools of themselves again, but even so I think they realize that their accomplices in the media won’t allow this little episode to become a serious story.
It was a serious MSM story for about two days, but I think they’ve moved on. The MSM attention span is usually about ten minutes unless it involves an abduction, a rape, a murder or a runaway bride, so this story lasted longer than usual and is probably history by now.
The MSM did highlight the “rehearsed” aspect about this stupid event, but they have failed to remark on the fact that the one officer was actually a PR flack masquerading as a “soldier in the field”, or that such a staged and scripted event is an incredibly demeaning way of treating our soldiers, not even trusting them to speak their minds individually whilesimultaneously allowing them to take abullet and diefor their country.
I am disgusted by the whole thing, and by the MSM’s complicity in supporting the charade by not speaking out against it.
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Just reported on CNNi :: under Republicans, the question whether going into Iraq was the right thing to do, support dropped 16 pts in one month!
I couldn’t find a link yet, only recent poll numbers for Colorado, which shows the support for President Bush’s job approval is dropping. Some remarks:
A 67-year-old southeast Denver woman, who asked not to be named, said the cost of Hurricane Katrina is one of the factors that changed her mind about the wisdom of the war in Iraq.
Part of her increasing distaste for the war “has to do with the increasing needs at home,” said the woman, who is white. She also wasn’t happy with the president’s performance.
“Frankly, I’m a little disappointed,” she said, adding that she voted for Bush twice. The nomination of Harriet Miers as a U.S. Supreme Court justice “is what tipped me over the edge . . . I cannot find too much about Miss Miers that qualifies her in my mind for the highest court in the land”.
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