Soldier says media distorted story
Posted by Richard on October 16, 2005
Thanks to Mr. Completely for pointing to Sgt. Ron Long’s account of the "staged interview" between Pres. Bush and some U.S. troops in Iraq that the MSM have been making such a fuss about. Sgt. Long — an Army Combat Medic who blogs at They Call Us, "Doc" — was one of the soldiers interviewed by Bush. He rejected the media characterization of the event as "staged" or "scripted" (emphasis in original):
First of all, we were told that we would be speaking with the President of the United States, our Commander-in-Chief, President Bush, so I believe that it would have been totally irresponsible for us NOT to prepare some ideas, facts or comments that we wanted to share with the President.
We were given an idea as to what topics he may discuss with us, but it’s the President of the United States; He will choose which way his conversation with us may go.
We practiced passing the microphone around to one another, so we wouldn’t choke someone on live TV. We had an idea as to who we thought should answer what types of questions, unless President Bush called on one of us specifically.
Sgt. Long, who’s been in Iraq almost a year, doesn’t think much of the media and their coverage of this event or the war in general:
… It makes my stomach ache to think that we are helping to preserve free speech in the US, while the media uses that freedom to try to RIP DOWN the President and our morale, as US Soldiers. They seem to be enjoying the fact that they are tearing the country apart. Worthless!
The question I was most asked while I was home on leave in June was, "So…What’s REALLY going on over there?" Does that not tell you something?! Who has confidence in the media to tell the WHOLE STORY? It’s like they WANT this to turn into another Vietnam. I hate to break it to them, but it’s not.
Read the whole thing, and read his follow-up quoting some of the emails he’s received in response. BTW, I noticed from one of the emails that Instapundit linked to Sgt. Long’s post, too, but I must have missed it. Sorry, Glenn, I didn’t mean to send the surge of traffic my links generate just to Mr. Completely and not to you.
Mr. Completely said
Interestingly enough, I became aware of Sgt. Long’s blog and post when I saw a referral in sitemeter from his blog to Mr. Completely, and I followed it back to see what his blog was all about.
I immediately put together a post about the interview, that night. As I was getting ready to post, the windstorm that was going on knocked out our power, so I posted it the next morning. It wasn’t until later that I found out a couple of the big bloggers also had the story.
……….Mr. C.