A Few Good Questions | The Salt Lake Tribune

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

So Gov. Gary Herbert was somewhere in Iraq today and his staff put together an odd sort of conference call for reporters.

The whole thing was moderated by conservative radio talk show host Rod Arquette and broadcast on KNRS. Instead of asking questions directly to the governor, reporters could submit them through a chat room and Arquette took a few questions and asked them on the air.

The overwhelming majority of the questions, however, were provided at the outset by Ally Isom, Herbert's spokeswoman, who posted the following in the chat room:

Dept. of Defense is running the show. We have very little info and the info we get is last minute.

Ask him if he took anything special for Utah's soldiers.

Ask him how hot it is.

Ask him how he prepared for the trip.

Ask him about Corporal Arruda's funeral last Saturday. (His citizenship was awarded posthumously.)

Ask him if his staff knows anything...

He can only discuss where he has been and what he has seen. He cannot discuss where he is going.

It's not just softball, it's like coach-pitch softball.

In case you were wondering: It turns out Iraq was, very, very hot. And, why yes, he did take something for Utah soldiers. He had special coins made for the trip. O.C. Tanner made the Utah coins, free of charge. In Utah, those coins might well be legal currency.

— Robert Gehrke Twitter: @RobertGehrke