Desperately Trying to Find a Receptive Audience

Apparently tired of actually having to answer the tough questions being asked by the major media outlets, Duh-bya has decided to hit the local broadcaster circuit. As reported in today’s Post, the “president” is going to regional broadcasters to push his agenda on Iraq. The regime’s thinking would appear to be that the local broadcasters — being a little more star-struck — are less likely to ask the hardball questions than the national media reporters. Now, frankly, I can’t blame them for bypassing the national media; anything to break up the big guys’ stranglehold on coverage is fine by me. But to be honest, the way the big media outlets have largely coddled him for the past year, I don’t know that he could ask for better treatment.

No, what alarms me is the revelation, about halfway through the article, that soldiers in Iraq have supposedly been authoring letters to their hometown papers, saying how well things are going. Unfortunately, it turns out that the letters in question are form letters, and one of the soldiers who was alleged to have sent it never even heard of the letter. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together here: Somebody’s trying to use people’s empathy for the soldiers to push the Bush reconstruction agenda. Whether that’s someone in the administration or just a “concerned citizen” remains to be seen. But I can only hope that somebody will make an effort to find out.