Dushan Yanich – 10/20/05

This page was last updated on October 20, 2005.

Using troops to boost ratings; Dushan Yanich; Beaver County Times; October 20, 2005.

As you will read below, this letter is an outright fraud.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“I watched President Bush on TV the other evening speaking to a group of our service personnel live and direct to Iraq.

“The purpose of this direct conversation was to thank the personnel and be on the alert because of the upcoming Iraq election to accept the recently approved Constitution. In addition, questions were asked by the service personnel to Bush.”

[RWC] If Mr. Yanich really watched the videoconference, I’d be surprised. You see, President Bush asked the questions, not the servicemen.

“Now this seems to be a great idea - to get a rise in his ratings. His current ratings are the lowest ever of any president during his second term in office, the upper 30s.”

[RWC] This is a nice talking point, but Bush’s current approval rating (39%) is higher than the lowest rating (37% and lower) registered by each of the previous seven presidents. For example, Democrat icon Harry S. Truman twice had an approval rating of only 23%.

“Later on in the evening, I found out that the entire ‘show’ was staged. One: all of the service personnel were hand-picked. Two: All of the questions to be asked by the service personnel were screened ahead of time. Three: the entire interview was presented to Bush’s staff prior to going on the air.

“This sounds like what Hollywood does for TV shows.”

[RWC] As I noted above, the President asked the questions. The show was not staged. While the soldiers rehearsed their responses before the videoconference, no one told them what to say.

Here’s what one of the participants (Sergeant Ron Long, an Army combat medic) wrote. “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 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.”

“Bush had no problem sending our troops to Iraq knowing that some would never come back alive, and those injured would suffer the rest of their lives because of the wounds they received to their bodies.

“Yet he couldn’t stand up front and take whatever questions he was asked by any serviceman walking by.”

[RWC] It’s clear Mr. Yanich won’t let the facts get in the way of a good bashing.