Another soldier has stepped forward to criticize last week’s MSM brouhaha over President Bush’s “staged” press conference with troops in Iraq. Via the Chattanooga Times Free Press (hat tip: milblogger LT Ron Long):

A Chattanooga soldier now in Iraq with the 278th Regimental Combat Team said soldiers used their own words during comments made last week in a satellite discussion with President Bush.

“We wanted to give President Bush a no-kidding assessment of what we have all been working 14- (to) 18-hour days on for the last 11 months,” said Lt. Gregg Murphy, of Chattanooga. “We gave him the God’s honest truth as we know it.”

The dialogue was among President Bush and 10 U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq last Thursday on the eve of Iraq’s constitutional referendum. Media outlets have called the event staged because the solders went through a rehearsal before talking live with President Bush.

“Staged infers that we were given scripts and that we followed those scripts,” Lt. Murphy wrote in an e-mail to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “This is not true. None of the members on the panel used any words that were not their own.”

Lt. Murphy said he was chosen to travel to Tikrit, Iraq, for the interview because he had spent the last three months leading an Iraqi army training program at a 278th base near the Iranian border.

Andrea Mitchell and the rest of the Beltway Bush-bashing press who ran with the troop-smearing story owe these men and women in uniform an apology.

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Take a look at the hitmen at The Huffington Post deriding Lt. Murphy. That’s the Left for you: We support the troops, by calling them vulgar names.

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A soldier speaks to the MSM
Lights! Camera! Projection!