. FWD from
STORY SUMMARY (for complete story see end of this summary)
[In Parts I and II of this terrific series, we saw how the world's ascending powerhouses of China, Russia and Iran had successfully encroached on US and Neocon power. In Part II we saw how some lesser players had been successfully eating the floor out from under the Bush administration. In Part II we now see the Bush administration eating the floor our from under itself.What amazes me in this part was how many major stories have come and gone, all of them barely glossed over in the press and congress. There's just no time to get to the bottom of one thing. A bigger one is sure to be here tomorrow. - MCR]
ENCROACHMENT
by Stan Goff Military/Veterans Affairs Editor
PART III
© Copyright 2006, From The Wilderness Publications,The Performance
July 14th 2006, 11:13am [PST] -- On October 13, 2005, George W. Bush conducted a staged teleconference with troops in Iraq.
I'd seen some weird shit in my day, and that definitely qualified as weird.
I suppose Roget's Thesaurus could have provided me with a more eloquent or evocative term, but weird was all I could think of that fits to describe the so-called video-conference that the Bush held with ten of the most haplessly humiliated officers and NCOs in the military (and one Iraqi collaborator).
Their fatigued faces almost sagging with temporary muscular failure from twenty-minute rigor mortis smiles (that surely seemed like 20 years), these unfortunates were required by the chain of command to leave their regular jobs on behalf of the slaughter and occupation and become public relations meat-Muppets for maybe the most inept perception management stunt ever performed by the Oval Office.
I touted the teleconference as a perfect counter-recruitment ad. Invite teenagers and ROTC students to watch this "teleconference." Join the military and be put on display as ventriloquist dummies. Join the military and be humiliated before the whole world in a thespian performance on par with a third-grade Halloween skit.
Show this buffoonery to prospective troops, and the recruiters will have to hang around courtrooms - like in the old days - to offer convicted felons armed service as an option to prison.
During this sorry stunt, Dubya danced around behind his podium like a six-year-old with pinworms, fidgeted with his notes until he lost them, and had his earpiece fall out about five times. He would lose the thread then talk over the lines of the other performers - whose performances weren't wooden; they were petrified. Under his smile, you could see the muscles in his face twitching with the mounting rage of a Caligulan blueblood as the whole thing went from bad to bizarre in its ineptitude. Someone had to face the wrath of the pipsqueak afterwards, if reports from Capitol Hill Blue had any validity; they claimed the Prez had been pretty unhinged lately - prone to crimson-faced, carpet-chewing tantrums.
Even the network news outlets found the whole thing so horrid in its execution that they were obliged - if they were to salvage even a shred of self respect - to ridicule the whole episode. When Scott McClellan attempted to field questions later that day and the reporters pounced on the whole excruciating exhibition, the best the Press Secretary could muster was, "I think what the American people heard was some very important information from our men and women in uniform."
The Press Secretary denied that the event was scripted, a denial that would have made an ass out of him even had the networks not obtained and broadcast footage of Allison Barber, a Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary, coaching the Muppet-troops on their lines prior to the performance.
McClellan looked bad. He'd been looking very bad lately, foreshadowing his eventual resignation. With Rove and Libby (and Judith Miller, too) spending their days in legal offices trying to get their story straight, and with Cheney attending to his dark malfunctioning heart, the center was not holding.
***** end summary. a fair use excerpt. not for profit ****