WP: Bush's Baghdad Turkey Displayed, Not Eaten

From Thursday's Washington Post. Will add link when available.

By Mike Allen
(c) 2003, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.

The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 2 1/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said Wednesday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.

more to come

laugh if it wasn't so damn sad.

the turkey and the turkey holding the turkey

sometimes Bush tops even my expections on how low he will go!

:-)

:-)

:toast:

:-)

n/t

Troops were real.

Don't that beat all.

How LOOOOOOWwwwwwww can he goooooooo?

lower than whale shit, fer sure/

wearing camos. And the ones who were real troops were hand-picked, guaranteed to behave nicely for the photo op. Even so, the Secret Service surrounded him, not even trusting hand-picked American troops.

n/t

In some shots, the agents had their arms out to keep the real soldiers from getting too close. In another, you could clearly see the earpiece of one of the camo-clad agents. I counted at least five "soldiers" who were really SS.

:D



Choose the "real" turkey in this photo, too!

I mean, just look at this picture! You got El Chimpo being his usual moran self, to the right is probably the DIVISION COMMANDER (looks like a star on that collar) and, to top it all off, he is HELPING Dubya hold up the fake platter.

Have I said today how much I hate these people?!?!?

Bush's image seems to be transposed on the scene. Look at the guy facing the other way whose back is pressing against *'s sleeve - really leaning into him. Don't you think someone would say, hey give the prez some room so we can take a picture? And, why is everyone looking at something to his right and noone is paying any attention to him? The division commander was probably laughing at what all of the others were laughing at in the front of the tent.

The guy facing the other way must have his head on the Prez.'s shoulder. Also, notice just below *'s right hand, it seems you can look through the soldier's right hind quarter.

They don't cook turkeys like that for a crowd. The so kind lady from Seattle told us that on the Thanksgiving food thread BEFORE Thanksgiving. They cut them up and cook the white meat separately from the dark.

Those guys are so incredibly lame. Well... some of the people all of the time... and all that.

re: "tray faux"

:D

I recall reading several posts that questioned the weight of the platter given the way *hole was strutting around with it. The posters asked if the turkey was real, and now we know that just like *hole, the bird and trimmings are fake!

Sublime...a new low for them.

(from the "wizard of whimsey")

You naughty boy!...

:evilgrin:

he is a fine dancer though...

Great work!

May thy goose be cooked, georgie-poo.

Good work.

troops? Was that fake, too? A fake serving line with fake food to those starving troops?

Kellog, Brown and Root, a division of, you guessed it, Haliburtin.

This pResidency couldn't get more plastic even if Michael Jackson replaced the dim son.

Can you imagine the reaction with a lot of people when they are told that the turkey was a fake. It was only used for a picture - a photo op. That's more devastating than we might think.

multiple choice

the turkey
the pResident
both

holding up a decoration for the camera..

Bush seemed to pick up that 20+ lb. bird like it was a tossled salad. What's so weird is that this fake turkey was obviously set up beforehand. I don't think "decorative turkeys" are standard G.I. issue. It was obvious too that Bush had been scripted to pick it up on cue. Here we go again. Six months from now, like after "Mission Accomplished", we'll hear that the Army setup the fake props and the commander in chief didn't know a thing about it.

with our tinfoil hat theories. Let our detractors step forward.

Now, what else was faked? Let us count the ways…

:tinfoilhat:

Seems like you can just believe the opposite of what they're saying these days.

Bush-hole (thanks for the idea SmokyBlues) got his photo op, the troops there were excited and smiling for the cameras and the bushies here were orgasmic of the fact that Bush-hole made the trip to Iraq. That was very courageous to them. Any report of the fakeness after the fact or the fact that he was there for just 2 1/2 hours won't matter.

Anyone notice that some stations, especially CNN whose reporters were left on the ground in Crawford, showed Shrub pick up the turkey, do a star turn and then put it back down in the same place...all in the space of a few seconds?

I saw Poppy Bush do a drop-by photo shoot at the Faith, NC Fourth of July picnic in 1992. Same kind of stunts...Poppy picks up the waiting barbeque sandwich, takes a bite for the camera, then puts it down. Then goes to the softball field, hits a softball, runs to first base, smiles for the camera........then gets a pinch runner and flies back to Washington. The whole visit took about 15 minutes.

Was anything real?

Administration officials tell Thursday's WASH POST that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate for photo op... MORE... 'Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays,' Mike Allen at POST to report. White House officials do not deny that they craft elaborate events to showcase Bush, but they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real. 'This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them,' Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad... Developing...

I wonder why they're admitting this out of the blue? Someone must have questioned it. Paul Begala will run with this one!

"...they craft elaborate events to showcase bush..."

"...they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real."

ROTFLMAO!!!

..."...they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real."

Uh, why the hell do they have to go out of their way to 'convey' qualities about him that are real, if those qualities ARE really in him...because if they are, people would naturally see them and NOT need the 'dramatized' image of them shoved down their throats!

Is it, instead, that those qualities are exactly what have NEVER existed in this conscienceless biological human shell, and, therefore, have to be 'pasted' onto his preditably heartless life?

yeah, and the sailors asked for the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner

and, you WON the election.

all fraud, all the time

Damn, the shot of him serving would have been enough.

But NOOOOO. They had to embellish just like the BA flight.

hilarious about this and at the same time so very sad. To think we must resort to play acting and staging , actually manufacturing a man calling himself "president" and "commander in chief" -- he simply is incapable of doing anything else. He is using troops as props on his stage of fools.

Wizard of Wimsey's photoshop--quite a powerful statement.

:eyes:

Commander and Chief is a phoney!!!!!!!!!!

It's a real roasted turkey (not a plastic one)used to decorate the buffet line. We're dealing with a formidable political opponent, whose many winger media allies frequently quote DU posts. Nowhere in Allen's expose does he say it's not a real roasted turkey. While criticizing the photo-op, care must be taken to stay within the given facts. Otherwise, you provide ammo -- in writing -- to those who would defeat us.

Especially real food that weighs a fraction of its plastic counterpart?

even buffet I've ever seen -- especially on a cruise ship -- has centerpieces of carved hams, pastry things, whatever. Anyway, the Post itself says the dinner's cook roasted the damn turkey. I'm as appalled as anyone here but the blatant photo-op but you simply can't make-up arguments and talking-points out of whole cloth. Cats have claws, get a grip!

has his hand under the platter. It makes for a good analogy of how the real work (blood/sweat/tears) is being done by the troops, and yet there is the Pretender in Chief trying to steal the glory (not that there is any).

Not only is Bush fake, but he tries to steal the accomplishments of others and make them his own.

The troops got to eat *steamed turkey* served from trays...Talk about "let'em eat cake."

Remember the British Airways airliner that supposedly came in radio contact with *'s super-duper secret "mission" to Iraq? British Airways says IT NEVER HAPPENED.

But who cares? BushCo got its photo op, Faux News reported it to the sheeple, the phoney polls show a phoney boost in *'s phoney approval ratings.

The whole thing is a goddamn fake -- wake up Amerika!!

"If he'd lie about this, what else would he lie about?"

Fake president holding Fake Turkey.

How many "gates" does that make now for this admin?

I'm on record as saying the turkey platter was fake, it was pretty obvious when I first saw it. The lies these guys come up with just boggles my mind. I mean they don't even need to lie, but they still do. Over and over and over again. It's pathological.

Even the trimmings were fake. Too much yellow in all of them. I think they started with yellow plastic and painted on top of it. When I doctored the pic it took half an hour of fucking with it to make the turkey look passably real - had to alter the color balance across the entire range and take out the yellow.

The bird was fake too.

FUCK BUSH Buttons, Stickers & Magnets

That's Hilarious...

I read on another board, a poster's assertion that this whole stunt occured at 6:30 AM baghdad time.

Is this true ?

In his first report, WP reporter Mike Allen claimed they arrived in Baghdad under cover of darkness early in the morning (5:30?). Subsequent accounts put this event in the evening. I don't know if it's been cleared up, though everyone seems to accept the evening version.

a few days ago.

Sounded like Allen just made a dumb mistake. It was PM.

n/t

Wayne Newton's column was based on a typo from another source. The error has since been retracted.

Seriously, where did the decorative turkey come from? It's hard to imagine the Army going to the trouble of creating decorative turkeys for the troops' table. Betcha anything Sforza did this.

http://www.notinourname.net/resources_links/bush_image_may03.htm

.... First among equals is Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer who was hired by the Bush campaign in Austin, Tex., and who now works for Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Mr. Sforza created the White House "message of the day" backdrops and helped design the $250,000 set at the United States Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar, during the Iraq war.

Mr. Sforza works closely with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman whom the Bush White House hired after seeing his work in the 2000 campaign. Mr. DeServi, whose title is associate director of communications for production, is considered a master at lighting. "You want it, I'll heat it up and make a picture," he said early this week. Mr. DeServi helped produce one of Mr. Bush's largest events, a speech to a crowd in Revolution Square in Bucharest last November.

To stage the event, Mr. DeServi went so far as to rent Musco lights in Britain, which were then shipped across the English Channel and driven across Europe to Romania, where they lighted Mr. Bush and the giant stage across from the country's former Communist headquarters.

A third crucial player is Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer in Washington who is now the director of presidential advance. Mr. Jenkins manages the small army of staff members and volunteers who move days ahead of Mr. Bush and his entourage to set up the staging of all White House events. ....

and is getting tiresome. I guess on short notice you recycle what you've already done. Easier than getting new ideas.

Shall we take up the chant? Where's the bird? or is it Who's the turkey?

We need to pin a slogan to this one and make sure Rove can't use this photo shoot to replace the carrier landing for the ol campagne trail!

Why the hell doesn't America see through this fraud.

I posted on DU when I saw the pics that the turkey was probably paper mache, from the way he picked it up and held the platter. No turkey and platter could be held in that casual manner.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33090-2003Dec3.html

Note: Title doesn't match original title used when story moved on wire.
The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner
In Iraq Picture, Bush Is Holding the Centerpiece

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A33 Good grief!


... Nevertheless, the foray has opened new credibility questions for a White House that has dealt with issues as small as who placed the "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the aircraft carrier Bush used to proclaim the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and as major as assertions about Saddam Hussein's arsenal of unconventional weapons and his ability to threaten the United States.

... The Democratic presidential candidates tipped their hats to the White House stage managers by refusing to criticize the trip, which dominated weekend newscasts.

Aides to the Democrats said they concluded that the less said about the trip, the better. In the view of these aides, the trip produced reassuring images of a situation that has badly deteriorated, and Democrats just wanted the moment to pass so they could go back to criticizing Bush's postwar policy.

more

..realize the import of what she has said?

"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."

Just noticed that myself... Hey Mary!! Ya Think??? JFC!!! He rejects anything that isn't in his peer group, that is, spoiled, lazy, stupid, rich due to no particular work of yout own, etc. etc. The real question is: When the hell are the people that are NOT his peers going to see him for what he is and stop supporting him?

Otherwise he could not reject it "regularly"...

to showcase Bush, but they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real.

"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."

bush is sounding more and more like rush. wait... bush/rush... rush/bush... brush?

nt

If it is so efing "Real" .. why the need to "dramatize his policies"?

Did anyone ask him to play act his "real" qualities? If they are genuine, I think that would be apparent.

:dunce:

Was the cook an Iraqi?

Hm, time for those medieval food-tasters again.

is Rove. How does the guy create so many ironic situations yet is seen as a political genius. Irony truly may be dead in the US.
Scott

and now the turkey shoot is toast as well. and even the codpiece shot is toast. rove couldn't have planned better to provide us with two-word descriptions of these self-serving fake pictures.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/0,7371,337484,00.html

in Iraq, a Fake Courageous "Hero" who ran on 9/11, a Fake "thinker", dammit, the list just keeps growin..............................

Houston, we got a Fake President Problema.

Their fantasy is our real-life nightmare.

Steve Bell is a genius! :thumbsup:

For extra bonus points: Can you pick out the real soldiers?

I love it, W gets all choked up when he's surrounded by real soldiers. Ah excuse me, Mary someone forgot to tell you those weren't real soldiers that were surrounding him.

Is there ANYTHING real and honest about this man and his handlers???

What an embarrassment the idiot chimp-in-thief is!

A poster here speculated on that several days ago, I guess they were right. Shameless photo op. :puke:

an inspired moment, I guess.

i bet the whole damn thing was FAUX....filmed at a base in Texas

he didn't fly to fucking Bagdad!
i'll bet my kids on it!!!

How else could they create the subliminal reference they wanted to this?


* as the great caregiver and nurturer, the provider of bounty. :puke:

Probably basted in fine Iraqi oil as well.

The article says...

"Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush's stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33090-2003Dec3.html

So they're claiming this is a REAL turkey, not a plastic one, but that this real turkey was used merely as table decoration and wasn't eaten. I don't believe it. First of all, as many others have pointed out, it looks much too light to be a real turkey. Bush is holding the tray in front of him with both hands on one side of the tray. If that were an actual turkey, the tray would be so heavy that he would need to hold the tray with his hands centered on opposite sides of the tray in order to balance it. And he isn't straining at all -- you'd at least expect to see his neck muscles protruding.

More importantly, are we to believe that it is the norm for military meals, even a special Thanksgiving meal, to include a complete perfectly roasted turkey that is nothing more than a table decoration that gets thrown away at the end of the evening? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to use plastic replicas that can be reused every year? Wouldn't a plastic turkey also be easier to transport? "Military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines." I'd like to hear from DUers who have served or are serving in the military to find out if this is true. I'd also like to hear from anyone involved in large-scale catering or food services to see what they think about using a real turkey as a table decoration.

I believe the bird was plastic. As usual, they're letting out just enough truth to cover themselves. If they admit the bird is plastic, they are saying that when Bush lifted that tray he was actively involved in a misrepresentation. By admitting the turkey was a decoration but claiming it was still a real bird, they make it seem that Bush just made a mistake.

but have done some food shots in film. The turkey would have been "browned" a bit with a handheld 'torch' - but the beautiful tones are accomplished by painting it with kitchen bouquet. Food styling's quite an art and there's probably tons of information about it on the net.

That said, I can't imagine why they's need a photo perfect turkey for the mess hall. My money's on Rove. I think it flew in with the other turkey.

for decoration in a chow line.

n/t

they are calling it a photo-op:

Google search on Baghdad turkey Bush

I hope this "turkey" is preserved and put on display for all to see. Didn't the fighter that flew Bush* out to the carrier get immediately retired to a museum to be put on display for its part in the (propaganda) war.

Food safety experts are always warning against leaving a bird sitting around at room temperature like that ... in addition, catering firms that specialize in "meals" meant to be photographed often don't roast the meat properly (so it doesn't shrivel up), but just paint it to look like it's done.

I'm glad the troops were fed from properly-heated serving trays ...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33090-2003Dec3?language=printer


By the way, isn't wandering over and picking up the centerpiece just to show off, the kind of dorky thing that a clueless uncle or tipsy cousin does at a family dinner?

Was it part of the original dinner or was it brought over as part of Bush's entourage?

and said if the food in the Marines was that good he'd still be there.

Somehow I knew it was fake. It just looked too perfect.

does anyone really think they would waste the money with real turkeys for decoration when they haven't provided enough flak jackets for the soldiers? Any money spent on the soldiers can't go into their greedy pockets. Most people who do catering have decorations for each event but they are plastic. Don't you think the grapes look plastic? And wouldn't the soldiers be cutting into a real roast turkey when they get mess hall turkey? Nah, it was for the photo op and that picture and the truth has gotten a lot of play-even saw it on ABC news tonight. Funny how it works when you lose your crediability....

...which pretty much signifies his "presidency".