I had the honor of taking part of a bloggers’ call with the White House. The focus was on the surge.
I started a post with a lot of details on the call itself, but I heard Tony Snow say something that has been lost in the din for a while:
Jim Geraghty has details on the call:
Tony Snow, on a conference call with bloggers right now: “We need a surge of facts. That’s one of the things we’re going to be working on. I’m going to be doing it from the podium…. So far we have had very few visuals to confirm what Americans want to believe. We have an amazing and heroic American military… The only way to change public opinion [on Iraq] is to present a fuller, more nuanced and more accurate picture.”
“We’re gonna present bad news too. You have to… But it’s a miracle anyone supports the war, based on the characterizations that have been painted.”
Snow says he’s going to put up slides, video, and audio on new screens behind him during the daily press briefing. “We’re not gonna spin, but we’re going to provide real hard data.”
As McQ explains,
For dead-enders like me that’s welcome news, because to this point, I’ve only had Bill Roggio and Michael Yon [links added] available to present the type of information on the other and more successful aspects of the Iraqi effort.
That’s all fine, but let’s concentrate on this:
Others in the call:
Laurie Byrd of Wizbang
Atlas Shrugs
Red State
Rob Bluey
Military.com
Power Line
Real Clear Politics
ThreatsWatch
Truth Laid Bear
The Hill Congress Blog
The Weekly Standard‘s blog
Here’s the Initial Benchmark Assessment Report on the surge, and the transcript of the President’s press conference this morning.
Had to look at this benchmarking thing and was wondering why it failed… then I realized that I was looking at the wrong Nation! Silly me!