"CONVERSATION WITH THE TROOPS" COMPLETE WITH REHERSAL

We've known for awhile that most Bush appearances are simply staged events, tightly scripted with little, if any, room for error. NBC Nightly News gave us an unexpected peek behind the curtain Thursday evening.

Apparantly unknowingly, the satellite feed was being received in newsrooms several minutes before President Bush's teleconference with ten soldiers, five of them officers. From NBC News' story:

“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.

Although the soldiers were reportedly not told what to say, it was clear that this was supposed to be a PR event to push support for the effort in Iraq. And Ms. Barber made it clear that the President was only interested in the three issues she mentioned.

Now, it's no secret that administrations from both parties have staged events to promote their agendas. But it's rare that we get to see just how...and no administration has relied on these PR bits as this one.