WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - A review by former intelligence officers has concluded that the Bush administration "apparently paid little or no attention" to prewar assessments by the Central Intelligence Agency that warned of major cultural and political obstacles to stability in postwar Iraq.

The unclassified report was completed in July 2004. It appeared publicly for the first time this week in Studies in Intelligence, a quarterly journal, and was first reported Wednesday in USA Today. The journal is published by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, which is part of the C.I.A. but operates independently.

Had to laugh at "which is part of the C.I.A. but operates independently."

Knowing how wrong CIA analysis always is, I will take the opposite view, thank you very much.

Bush Videoconference With Troops Staged
It has emerged that President Bush's nationally televised videoconference with US troops in Tikrit, Iraq on Thursday was scripted beforehand. The White House had painted the event as an impromptu conversation with the troops, but video from the satellite feed before the event gave lie to those claims. The ten US soldiers and one Iraqi were coached in their answers before the event by Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Allison Barber. She stood at the White House podium where Bush would later stand, she read part of his opening remarks and then proceeded to outline the questions Bush would ask. At times, she suggested phrasing for the soldiers' responses.

Um, no the "answers" weren't "coached" Bill.

The public affairs woman merely told the soldiers who were asking the questions in what order to ask them.

The story is a giant load of manure.

Sorry to disappoint.

(What's the next leftist talking point of the day. You've spewed forth two already in this thread. C'mon, three's the charm Billy).

Oh, and you might want to stay on topic.

Only Rick P gets to regurgitate lefty bs that has nothing to do with the posting in question.

The answers were coached: do some research. I don't know why this should be some kind of surprise; its not like every press conference Bush does in the US isn't coached as well.
The administration has consistently relied on this kind of propaganda to maintain even the abysmal approval ratings they now hold.

Yeah, actually its not the first staged event in Iraq.

Two and a half years after the US occupation began, there stood President Bush at his podium in the White House in front of a massive plasma screen TV, holding an earpiece to his head (out in the open this time). Before him, beamed in by satellite, were the 10 handpicked soldiers. They sat in three rows, fawning over Bush and delivering glowing assessments of the situation on the ground. At one point, it seemed as if one of the soldiers, Master Sergeant Corine Lombardo, was lifting from one of Bush's "major addresses" on Iraq when she told the president, "We began our fight against terrorism in the wake of 9/11, and we're proud to continue it here."

It turns out that the soldiers had actually been coached by Pentagon official Allison Barber before the event and were given Bush's questions in advance. At one point during the coaching, which was caught on videotape, Barber asked, "Who are we going to give that [question] to?"

JKP:

This is what you mean by coaching? That the questions were given in advance! And that specific soldiers were given specific questions!

Gee, ya think that might be b/c those soldiers might have different areas of expertise?

Again, this is absolute b.s.

Of course they give questions in advance. Um, in fact that's what journalists themselves do all the time when interviewing someone.

But no one told the soldiers in either case what to say in response. That's the point. Without that, you've got bupkis.

You do some research.

I don't get it. Are we supposed to engagfe oin pro or anti American propaganda? FDR didn't hire Archibald MacLeish to plump for the Nazis, did he?

Oh, and btw, it this was some nefarious plot, why was it done in full view of the press?

Such nonsense.

Jim,

I think you misunderstand. The soldiers were given specific answers to specific question, and the even was not presented as being staged.
Now, if was supposed to be the administration's job to perform like a acting troup to the American public, then maybe we could excuse this kind of behavior.
Journalists do that all the time? When their interviewing a celebrity. You really think its fair for journalists to be in bed with politicians? To come to a consensus of questions and answers that bests suits the PR interests of all involved?
The USSR used to have a publication called Pravda. Are you familiar with it?

Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged (DEB RIECHMANN, October 14, 2005, AP)

It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.

"This is an important time," Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. "The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you."

Barber said the president was interested in three topics: the overall security situation in Iraq, security preparations for the weekend vote and efforts to train Iraqi troops.

As she spoke in Washington, a live shot of 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry Division and one Iraqi soldier was beamed into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from Tikrit — the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me," Barber said.

A brief rehearsal ensued.

"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.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 bars the domestic dissemination of official American information aimed at foreign audiences. The law singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." The GAO has now found on at least four separate occasions that administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions when they disseminated news written by the government or its contractors without disclosing the conflict of interest.

Ike:

All government reports are propaganda. Ever read the intro to a president's budget? But fortunately there's nothing partisan about winning the war. Unless, that is, you're saying Democrats are rooting for the Ba'athists?

Bill:

They paid attention, they just ignored it. The war wasn't about stability but instability:

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/01winter/peters.htm

Does anyone here actually care whether this is true?

Gee, David, if you're not outraged then you're not paying attention!!

LOL

It would be incompetence not to help the soldiers prepare for being on national television with the President, to help them avoid embarrassing themselves. However, the soldiers did get to write their words themselves. So it wasn't scripted in the sense of the White House telling the soldiers what to say, just in the sense of everyone preparing their words in advance.

If the quotes from the AP article are accurate, what "coaching" was there? It was "When the President asks X, who gets it? Captain so and so. OK, then who gets question Y?". Not coaching at all. Just a dry run so everything went smoothly.

By the way, remember when a reporter planted the body armor question for Rumsfeld. Do you think Ike and JKP were outraged at that?

Are jkp and ike related to the other site pest, kgb? Triplets separated at birth - or did they attend the same classes at Left Wing U.

Wow serious lack of reading comprehesion from jkp.

I read the ap acct that you cite already.

Where in it does it say the ANSWERS were scripted by the administration?

Nowhere.

Again, they were told the questions, and lined up who was going to answer what, not what they were actually going to say.

I'll add for the sake of reading-challenged that one of the soldiers involved as blogged about what happened, and, er, his account bears no resemblance to what the lefties are trying to turn this into:

See here