During the practice session before Bush entered the room, a senior Pentagon official, Allison Barber, stood at the podium and queried the troops about topics the president later asked about, including the training of Iraqis and the level of progress. At her prompting, the soldiers raised their hands when the topic they were to answer came up.

Barber insisted later 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.

Why don't they just preface these with "Made for television" or "Dramatic Re-enactment"? They staged the whole damn thing!