3 years since "Mission Accomplished"

Well, I hope all of you realize that yesterday was the three year anniversary of Bush's flight suit stunt on the decks of The USS Abraham Lincoln. You know, the one with the banner that said "Mission Accomplished". We all know that was staged. But I didn't know just how staged it was. Look at this:

The event itself had more planning than a Superbowl half-time show. The former ABC television producer, Andrew Sforza, who had become Bush's Leni Riefenstahl, arranged all of the details: the multiple camera angles, the lighting, the staging of the sailors, the direction of each shot, the mise en scène, nothing was left to chance. Sforza had a team of nearly one hundred production technicians on the ship preparing (or "advancing") for the President's triumphal landing. Sforza, who is famous for contracting expensive lighting rigs from Europe set on barges that bathed the Statue of Liberty in light as a backdrop for one of Bush's photo-ops, hired associate producers, set builders, grips, lighting and sound specialists, assistant directors, and managers who worked with the major television networks to provide direct feeds and other accommodations. Sforza's set designers dictated the specific colors each of the lines of sailors would wear, the colors of the air deck smoke that was used, the monumental music played. They also made sure there were plenty of black, Latino, and female faces in the frame.

Nearly one hundred production technicians. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

The above is from an aticle called, "Bush semiotics" by Joseph A. Palermo. If you want to be sickened by what went into that whole psy-ops photo-op, just go read the whole article.