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Don't Say "Softball!"

In our Pentagon military analyst doc dump thread, Kevin H comes up with a beauty. You can see it here.

In the exchange, someone (the name is redacted) emails public relations officials in the Pentagon with news that Jed Babbin, who was deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration and a participant in the analyst program ("one of our military analysts," the emailer calls him), would be guest hosting the Michael Medved radio show. And Babbin wanted to interview Gen. George Casey, then the commanding officer in Iraq. Babbin is the editor of Human Events.

But just in case Pentagon officials were worried that the interview might not be worth doing, the emailer made the case: "this would be a softball interview and the show is 8th or 9th in the nation."

Allison Barber, a Public Affairs official at the Pentagon, responded quickly:

Thanks for sending this.

Just fyi, probably wouldn't put "softball" interview in writing. If that got out it would compromise jed and general casey.

The emailer, somewhat chastened, replied "check, check." Not bad advice at all.

Note: As for who this emailer is, it's unclear. The Pentagon redacted email addresses in the release, so it could very well be an official in the public affairs office emailing from a private address. The use of the phrase "our military analysts" certainly suggests that.


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Allison Barber, the "public affairs official" is actually a political appointee. She earned her Bushie stripes by coordinating a "not rehearsed" teleconference photo op with Bush and the troops that was clearly rehearsed.

Fron ThinkProgress, October 2005:

Pentagon communications aide Allison Barber “insisted the questions were not rehearsed. The military had been told ahead of time only about topics the president might want to talk about, not specific questions. ‘We just knew broad themes,’ Barber said.”

Yet reporters could clearly hear White House handlers, including Barber herself, prepping the troops for President Bush’s photo-op:

WH Pooler Geoff Earle of the New York Post writes of the teleconference: “The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, “Who are we going to give that [question] to?”


Ouch.

Nice of them to let Pat Tillman to provide a little bit of PR spin as well...

Please don't say "softball". We prefer "kid gloves" or "butt-kissing Bushie sycophancy."

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This would be hilarious if it wasn't TRUE!

Uh oh, did I just put that in writing?

PEACE

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Did anyone believe those guys?

I knew they were drinking the Kool-aide right away and always turned them off.

But I loved reading that email exposing the spinners.

ixnay on the oftball-say!

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Perhaps someone in Bush's office should send Barber an email suggesting that (s?)he not use email to criticize corruption by a member of the Bush administration.

Priceless!

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All you need to know about the geniuses behind the Iraq War is in this incident: Barber writes an email about "softball" interviews in order to warn someone about the dangers of writing emails about "softball" interviews.

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