A "Staged" Teleconference?

The ASSociated Press is hyperventilatingly reporting that President Bush's satellite-linked pep talk to a group of U.S. soldiers in Iraq was completely and totally set up to look positive - which, of course, the Extreme Media just knows HAS to be a fabrication, because they know that Iraq is really Vietnam in the sand and a quagmire and a meat grinder and a disaster and is going to be, dammit, if they have anything to say about it.

But look at how the lead paragraph is phrased:

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.

Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards makes a point that should be so obligatory as to not require utterance:

What did [the AP] mean, the questions were "choreographed?" Aren't the questions always "choreographed?"

Indeed. Notice that the press isn't claiming that the GIs were told what to say in response. They were just allowed to establish the order in which they would speak and which soldier would respond depending on the nature of the question as it related to a particular specialty or area of expertise. Which is how such media sessions typically function.

But then it isn't "staging" that the EM objects to, as the real thing took place all the time during the Clinton years with their enthusiastic participation. Just their fear that George Bush might be doing it in furtherance of "goals" to which they are bitterly and lividly opposed.

Now if the President had asked the troops what they thought about his latest Supreme Court pick, the AP might have been on to something....