Interfacing with Iraqi civilians

Follow-up on Bush’s heavily staged video-conference blogged in my last post (Scotty McClellan, by the way, claims that the obvious scripting and admitted prepping of the soldiers, which was overheard by CNN, was necessitated by the technological problems of the event with the satellites and all that). But as scripted as it was, the exchange could still be revealing, as when Bush asked one captain, “As you move around, I presume you have a chance to interface [!] with the civilians there in that part of the world. And a lot of Americans are wondering whether or not people appreciate your presence or whether or not the people are anxious to be part of the democratic process.” The captain responded, “Sir, I was with my Iraqi counterpart in Tikrit, the city Tikrit last week, and he was going around, talking to the locals. And from what he told me that the locals told him, the Iraqi people are ready and eager to vote in this referendum.” So the only interfacing he’s doing is with someone in the Iraqi military, who told him exactly what he wanted to hear (and who in turn was informed by locals who told him what he wanted to hear).