>>Even the teleconferences with the soldiers troops in Iraq were scripted all the way. It became evident when the link went live before schedule, and they were still giving soldiers troops the orders on what to ask and in what order, and one soldier troop was, I think, told to just stand there.
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>>Sheesh, I thought everybody knew this.
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>I remember the troop telecon show with the footage being broadcast a wee bit too early. That one will be tough to top. But with all the scriptedness of that debacle, i recall that some soldiers who were in on the show commented that they had "assigned topics" to discuss, not specific questions. However, i am not sure if being bypassed for promotion based on the questions asked was every discussed ;) Good gawd, i may be defending shrub.

Defending them via "he didn't know what was done down there"? Well, that doing is directly coming from his overall orders and his choice of top personnel. So if he didn't know, it's because he didn't want to know.

Having an assigned topic is just as bad as having an assigned question. It's practically list of things to talk about, everything else is verboten. Which may as well work with soldiers troops, but I'm still amazed that it works with the press. Or maybe the word "presstitute" wasn't a joke.