Several folks have sent links that work for them to view the videos I mentioned on the C-Span website. Unfortunately, these links seem to only work for specific browsers…and not even all the time. C-Span has their video clips on an "RTSP" protocol (Real Time Streaming Protocol) which is almost a guarantee that visitors will have trouble, plus they link to some of them in a pop-up window that doesn't want to pop up, at least in any of my browsers. I can download the files but not watch them online…which I find is happening with more and more websites that get fancy with pop-ups and JavaScript and other bells 'n' whistles.
In the meantime, a few of my correspondents have argued that the chat Bush had with those soldiers was not exactly "scripted." No, in a literal sense it wasn't — though when deputy assistant defense secretary Allison Barber rehearsed the troops beforehand, that was a word she used. My complaints were not that everything was controlled to the point where everyone knew in advance what everyone was supposed to say. You kinda expect that to happen with any president and especially with this one. It's that it was done so poorly and almost in a manner so as to insult our intelligence. We know George Bush (or, again, any president) can have his aides pick out ten or twelve soldiers who are on his side and will stay "on-message" and say just what the administration wants to represent as the truth. But doing it the way they did and doing it so ineptly deserves a certain amount of ridicule. Bush hammering away at a home for Katrina victims the other day on The Today Show was another phony stunt. I dunno…I have this idea that anyone else could have driven those nails as well or better, and Bush could have used the hour or two in some way that would have helped those people more. I kind of expect him, as the most powerful man in the world, to do something my handyman couldn't do.
I keep thinking about something Jon Stewart said on a recent Daily Show, which is that this president refuses to answer questions from adults as if they are adults. The answer to everything lately seems to be, "Shut up…I know what I'm doing." That's hard to believe when they don't even know how to stage a simple media event involving a satellite link.