TV Nation Building

"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." The ten U.S. Army soldiers and one Iraqi soldier speaking from Tikrit were "coached" before Bush spoke to them. The Iraqi, Sergeant Major Akeel, only said, "Thank you very much for everything. I like you." Reporter Jeremy Scahill observed, "Under Saddam, Iraqis were bombarded via their TVs with video of the Iraqi leader meeting his generals in Tikrit. ... For Iraqis, Tikrit represented the mother of all locations for the regime's propaganda." Scahill contrasts the soldiers' glowing reports with "most independent assessments, to which the White House would never dare listen." After spending a week with "a crack unit of the Iraqi army," a Knight Ridder reporter wrote, "Instead of rising above the ethnic tension that's tearing their nation apart, the mostly Shiite troops are preparing for, if not already fighting, a civil war against the minority Sunni population."