Troops in Scripted Event?

This actually didn't seem as bad as I was told it was. It seems that the troops were given a rundown of what they were to expect so they wouldn't be surprised.

"I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me," Barber said.

A brief rehearsal ensued.

"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"

"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.

"Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.

"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.

And so it went.

"If the question comes up about partnering — how often do we train with the Iraqi military — who does he go to?" Barber asked.

"That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said.

"And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit — the hometown — and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" she asked.

This seems like pretty standard stuff so they are ready to answer the questions. It is like a TV pre-interview where they let the person know what they are going to ask so you can think about your answers a bit. I was thinking that they were heavily coached or given a script or something. And here is the AP being the AP undermining troop confidence etc:

The president told them twice that the American people were behind them.

"You've got tremendous support here at home," Bush said.

Less than 40 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll taken in October said they approved of the way Bush was handling Iraq. Just over half of the public now say the Iraq war was a mistake.

The first statistic says that Americans think that Bush is screwing up the war and the second says that actually going to war was a mistake. Neither of the statistics show that the troops are not supported by people at home though. In fact most people want us to stay the course according to this article.

Overall attitudes about the war while negative haven't changed dramatically through the summer and a solid majority, 60 percent, want U.S. troops to stick it out until Iraq is stable.

I have a feeling that a poll saying "do you support the troops fighting in Iraq" would get an even larger majority of people behind them. I guess the AP would think that is just pro-Bush propaganda or something.