II. Billmon: A Big Fan
—
I.
WH Pooler Geoff Earle of the New York Post writes of the teleconference: "The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, "Who are we going to give that [question] to?"
Transcript of President Bush’s Teleconference With U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
BUSH: And how are they doing? I mean, 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.
KENNEDY: Mr. President, I’m going to field that question to Captain Pratt.
PRATT: Good morning, Mr. President. My name is Captain Steven Pratt from Pocatello, Idaho, serving with the 116th Brigade Combat Team as the Iraqi army coordinator.
The Iraqi army and police services, along with coalition support, have conducted many and multiple exercises and rehearsals. Recently, we’ve conducted a command post exercise in which we brought together these Iraqi security forces with emergency service units and the joint coordination center, in which we all sat around a terrain model and discussed what each one would do at their specific location and what they would do at the referendum.
It was impressive to me to see the cooperation and the communication that took place among the Iraqi forces.Along with the coalition backing them, we’ll have a very successful and effective referendum vote.
BUSH: Captain, thank you very much.