Well, I'll have to concede that the flags on the background have only nine stripes, and I did not notice that until it was pointed out.
Frankly, I had some difficulty trusting a source named "rumor mill" so I tried to look for a photograph at an alternate source. There is a small image showing an area of the background having the image of one complete "9 stripe flag" on whitehouse.gov at URL
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0050628-7.html .
Very interesting since the U.S. flag has never had only 9 stripes. Throughout history, there have been usually 13, but there was one version (May 1795 - April 1818) that had 15 stripes.
In my search for alternate photos of the speech, I ran across some taken by military photographers. Interestingly, the only photo I found of Bush at the podium taken by military photographers is taken from an angle as to not show the flags.
The picture below was taken from
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=7527
The U.S. President has the power to change the flag via an Executive Order.