>>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.
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>You mean using the troops as a scripted media prop isnt "supporting the troops"?.

It is a support... using them to prop the propaganda.

>I've always wondered what happened to the soldier who asked Rummy where the hell the armor was.

I figure he's still at the same position, whereas Rummy isn't. Somehow I don't see that this guy is better of than he is ;).

>(whats with the soldier/troops thing?)

My small protest against language abuse. I've actually heard one congress(...person?)... member agree that it is abuse. One soldier is a human being, a person. Troops are a plural of a plural (word "troop", look up any dictionary, assumes a group of people, be they actors in a troupe, or soldiers in a "theater of operations"), faceless and expendable. Not a single soldier has died in Iraq. It's troops who do, and it's troops who are sent there - but when counting them, they don't mean "20000 troops" as "20000 military units" (that they don't have, anyway), they actually mean "20000 armed persons". It's just that the persons are invisible this way.

You can always see when they start raping the language. Just listen to the news - you'll never hear about Blackwater being mentioned as militants (or the favorite pejorative from the nineties, "paramilitary formations"), nor about Hezbollah or Hamas as security contractors or troops. You won't hear about Chavez government, but you'll hear about Chavez regime, whereas you'll never hear about Israeli regime. And so on.