Yesterday, Deb Riechmann and the Associated Press published this article:

Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged

WASHINGTON - 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.

I’m just going to examine the first paragraph because the entire article hinges on it.

[More:]

It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops,

No, Deb, it wasn’t. At the White House website, it was billed as “President Addresses U.S. Troops in Iraq in Video Teleconference” and “Fact Sheet: The President Participates in a Video Teleconference with U.S. Troops,” there was no mention in either document of a “conversation.”

Can we at least agree with the dictionary definition of a conference as “a formal meeting for discussion,” and an address as being “a formal speech delivered to an audience,” whereas a conversation is “the informal exchange of ideas by spoken words.” Bush conducted a conference for our benefit, he wasn’t holding a town-hall meeting, Q&A session, or press conference–and he certainly wasn’t having a conversation!

Let’s continue with Deb’s “reporting:”

…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.

Is she serious? President Bush was holding a conference so he hewed to an agenda. (That’s agenda, Deb, “a list of items of business to be considered and discussed at a meeting.") Now if Bush had started speaking randomly while at the podium and wasting people’s time with useless blather, that would have been unusual and newsworthy. But nothing like that happened, so her finding fault with his wholly unexceptional way of running a conference is just silly.

As for the questions Bush asked, put yourself in his shoes and imagine which topics you’d like to know more about. Chances are they’d be the same ones he picked:

• How are preparations going for the Iraqi referendum? “[Are] you confident? I mean, how do you feel the operations are going?
• What progress is being made toward the Iraqis taking over their own security? “How are they doing? Give us an assessment. One of the things, Captain, that people in America want to know is, one, do the Iraqis want to fight, and are they capable of fighting. And maybe somebody can give us an appraisal.”
• Do the Iraqi people support our presence? “Captain, thank you very much. Let me ask you something. As you move around, I presume you have a chance to interface with the civilians there in that part of the world. And a lot of Americans are wondering whether or not people appreciate your presence or whether or not the people are anxious to be part of the democratic process. Can you give us a sense for the reception of the people there in Tikrit toward coalition forces, as well as the Iraqi units that they encounter?”
• How has life improved in Tikrit since Saddam was overthrown? “And is it possible to give us a sense, kind of a calibration of what life was like when you first got there, and what it’s like today?”

See? They were only “choreographed” in the sense that any event intended to inform the public is choreographed. The remainder of Bush’s questions were polite inquiries asking how the soldiers were doing.

There’s no point in continuing with the rest of her snarky nonsense because the premise for the article was wrong. The President was holding a meeting with soldiers to tell us about progress being made in Iraq, there was nothing underhanded or sneaky in how the meeting was conducted.

If you’re looking for a scandal in all this, consider that the President has to hold these meetings because the mainstream media refuses to report anything that they can’t distort through their anti-Bush, anti-America, and anti-military biases. In the War on Terror, our own media is the best weapon our enemies have.

[Edit] Michelle Malkin has a link to a post from SGT. Ron Long, an Army combat medic, who was at the teleconference in Iraq.

[Edit] Little Green Footballs is also covering this MSM scandal, but in the comments section there’s a link posted by Semi-OT that points to an entry by Mohammed at Iraq The Model:

Iraqis Preparing To Decide
Now let me take you in a short journey in Baghdad; I woke up this morning and decided to take a tour to see Baghdad preparing for the referendum, first thing I saw and surprised me was a leaflet thrown in front of our door. It was calling for a ‘NO’ stating 10 reasons for doing that. I read the leaflet that had the Ba’athist tone with five out of 10 of the points said that approving this draft constitution is a Zionist goal. I tried hard to find a connection and of course there wasn’t any and it looked like a desperate attempt to use conspiracy theories.

To give you an example of the points in that paper I’ll tell you what one point was “what if an Iraqi woman married an Israeli man? Should we grant their children the Iraqi nationality!?” and yes, they used way too many exclamation points and question marks.

Absolutely you should read the whole article!