Blue Star Chronicles

Stephen Colbert is in Iraq this week. He is taping four episodes of The Colbert Report from Baghdad. Among other things, he greeted the troops wearing a suit made of camouflage and had his head shaved in for our U.S. Troops by General Ray Odierno, Commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq. Read about it below, see a photo and a video of Colbert appearing at a commencement speech from Iraq.

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert has long been a supporter of the Troops. He has raised money for school supplies for the children of Soldiers, contributed his support for the Yellow Ribbon Fund which helps injured veterans and is donating the U.S.O. proceeds from this weeks iTunes downloads of his episodes this week.

As I’m sure you know, he does the faux news show, ‘The Colbert Report,’ that airs on Comedy Central. This week, he is taping four episodes from Baghdad, Iraq. This is the first time in U.S.O. history that a show is being taped, edited and broadcast from a combat zone. The shows are called, ‘Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando’.

Colbert states that one of the reasons for him deciding to do this series of shows is that the people of America seem to have forgotten that we still have 135,000 Troops in harms way in Iraq.

Shortly after the inauguration, though, he began talking to a fellow board member at Donorschoose about the troops in Iraq.

There was a general feeling among soldiers there, the board member said, that Americans had largely tuned the war out, that the economy had vacuumed up all the attention even though there are around 135,000 troops still here and still doing dangerous work.

“There’s a thesis statement there, which is something for my character to hang on to,” he said. “My character thinks the war is over because he doesn’t hear about it anymore. He’s like a child. A ball rolls behind the couch and he thinks it’s gone forever.”

Soldiers here are all too aware of America’s attention span about this war, several of them at the taping said. So the visit of Mr. Colbert, postmodern or not, was an unexpectedly high-caliber event among the recent string of retired baseball managers (Tommy Lasorda actually), wrestlers, cheerleaders and actors whose names require a little Googling.

“I’m surprised that anybody comes here,” said 27-year-old Lt. Travis Klempan of the Navy, from Lafayette, Colo. “I mean we had the guy from the Allstate commercial. It’s like: that’s nice.”

The shows will air tonight through Thursday night.

While in Iraq, Colbert made a brief appearance on the videotaped commencement speech for Goodrich High School in Michigan. Their Principal, David St. Aubin, is currently deployed to Iraq. You can see the video below.

Photos: www.wenn.com