Thursday, June 30, 2005 Troops' Silence at Fort Bragg Starts a Debate All Its Own By David E Sanger WASHINGTON, June 29 - So what happened to the applause? WHEN President Bush visits military bases, he invariably receives a foot-stomping, loud ovation at every applause line. At bases like Fort Bragg - the backdrop for his Tuesday night [June 28] speech on Iraq - the clapping is often interspersed with calls of "Hoo-ah," the military's all-purpose, spirited response to, well, almost anything. So the silence during his speech was more than a little noticeable, both on television and in the hall. On Wednesday, as Mr. Bush's repeated use of the imagery of the Sept. 11 attacks drew bitter criticism from Congressional Democrats, there was a parallel debate under way about whether the troops sat on their hands because they were not impressed, or because they thought that was their orders. David Irving comments: FIRST, about that "silence". I watched most of the speech on C-SPAN, and its cameras often swept the audience.    The troops had certainly been told not to chew gum. And to stay awake: last year on Bush's campaign trail at Colorado Springs, an officer on the podium just two rows behind his left shoulder slept soundly throughout the speech, his head nodding violently forwards, and jerking back several times. He was so close he could not be edited out. It was the best part of the programme.    There was applause at Fort Bragg, but it appeared to be supported mainly from the front rows -- the VIPs and officers, who afterwards eagerly pressed forward to shake their C-in-C's courageous hand while many a glowing Olympus and Canon was held aloft to click the scene.    Memo to the Secret Service: search all those cameras the next time. Nothing more noble than to die for one's country, as those Latins once put it (as Mr Dan Quayle would have said): That does not include being pixilated by a digital camera.    There was one point however, which only the most attentive expert might detect, where the audible applause sounds started a few seconds before the punch line. That had me thinking about what Dr Karl Weinrebe (assigned to accompany me on speaking tours in Germany in the 1980s) told me about his secret work as applause-manager for Dr Joseph Goebbels: Canned applause was fed into the loudspeaker system behind the audience at marked points in the script, to prime the pump, so to speak.    And boy does George W. know how to stick to a script. Just think how many lives that "bring 'em on" has cost his country now. IN the C-SPAN coverage much enjoyment was to be had from watching the professionalism of the Secret Service men (and at least one square-built young female with whom I would not like to tussle at a Publix checkout). They accompanied George closely throughout, and escorted him out of the hall afterward to his armor-plated, bombproof Cadillac with its two-inch thick windshields.    I don't recall seeing Hitler have to drive round his own country in a vehicle like that. I must check that footage of Triumph of the Will again. I DON'T want to be small minded about this, but The New York Times is one of the several major American newspapers which by its gullibility and deceits contributed wholeheartedly to the mess in which the US government now finds itself by waging an illegal war against Iraq    I don't say "coalition forces", because although Tony Blair and John Howard both foolishly committed their young men and women to the Iraqi theater of operations, the Iraqi venom is directed mainly at our transatlantic cousins and their paymasters.    The New York Times seems to think it has atoned enough by its little mea culpa earlier this year. How would the Latins say this: It has not. A FINAL thought about that Bush smirk, a word often used to describe his strange lopsided smile. I am not sure we are entitled to judge people on the fault lines that show up in their faces. But as a writer I have been practising how to describe the Bush smirk for future generations.    It is the expression that an infinitely, galactically, superior but boorish person would briefly assume when handing down a morsel of (to him, self-evident) wisdom to a truly moronic human being, instead of rounding it off with the street-word "stoopid!" -- as in, "It's about freedom and democracy, [stoopid]!" (cue that smirk). You watch.    Now, if I were in the presence of a Mark Clark, or a Werner Heisenberg, or an Edward Teller, -- all of whom it has been my privilege to meet -- or of some captain of industry, I would accept such well-merited judgment without hesitation, and with or without the smirk.    But from a president who cannot even pronounce the word nuclear, as he demonstrated yet again three times in his 28-minute speech? With Iraq once more atop the political agenda, the Senate on Wednesday gave hasty approval to an additional $1.5 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, to cover a budget gap caused in part by unexpected demands for health care by returning Iraqi veterans. The administration has reversed itself, and now plans to seek emergency money from both the House and the Senate. Before the Senate voted unanimously to raise the spending for health care, the head of the veterans administration returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to tell House members that, contrary to his testimony the previous day, the agency needs emergency financing for this year and the administration will be submitting a request. Democrats had seized on the veterans' spending issue as another example of the administration's mishandling of the war. Republicans moved quickly to respond to what was becoming a significant embarrassment. Capt. Tom Earnhardt, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg who participated in the planning for the president's trip, said that from the first meetings with White House officials there was agreement that a hall full of wildly cheering troops would not create the right atmosphere for a speech devoted to policy and strategy. "The guy from White House advance, during the initial meetings, said, 'Be careful not to let this become a pep rally,' " Captain Earnhardt recalled in a telephone interview. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, confirmed that account. As the message drifted down to commanders, it appears that it may have gained an interpretation beyond what the administration's image-makers had in mind. "This is a very disciplined environment," said Captain Earnhardt, "and some guys may have taken it a bit far," leaving the troops hesitant to applaud. After two presidential campaigns, Mr. Bush has finely tuned his sense of timing for cueing applause, especially when it comes to his most oft-expressed declarations of resolve to face down terrorists. But when the crowd did not respond on Tuesday , he seemed to speed up his delivery a bit. Then, toward the end of the 28-minute speech, there was an outbreak of clapping when Mr. Bush said, "We will stay in the fight until the fight is done." Terry Moran, an ABC News White House correspondent, said on the air on Tuesday night that the first to clap appeared to be a woman who works for the White House, arranging events. Some other reporters had the same account, but Captain Earnhardt and others in the back of the room say the applause was started by a group of officers. While the White House tried to explain the silence, Democrats were critical of Mr. Bush's use of the Sept. 11 attacks - comparing it to the administration's argument, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda. The independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks found no evidence of "a collaborative operational relationship" between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's organization. Mr. Bush declared in his speech, as he has many times in recent months, that the Iraq campaign is part of a wider war on terrorism that was brought home to America on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Bush, his aides said, was referring not to the past, but to the arrival in Iraq of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda once Mr. Hussein's government fell. "What we need is a policy to get it right in Iraq," Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush's opponents in the 2004 election, said on the NBC morning show "Today." "The way you honor the troops is not to bring up the memory of 9/11. It's to give the troops leadership that's equal to the sacrifice." Carl Hulse and David Stout contributed reporting for this article.     A Fox News broadcast attempts to explain the lack of applause at the Bush speech. It mentions that Bush staffers in the back initiated the applause: http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/6/28/181628/080

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