Jul 30 2008
McCain Was Right On Obama’s Unforgivable Act Of Ignoring Our Wounded Troops In Germany
The Surrendercrat Media is starting to give legs to the little publicized news on how Barrack Obama failed a key test of leadership and being Commander-in-Chief. I posted days ago on Obama’s unforgivable sin of setting high expectations among our wounded troops by a visit to them in Germany, and then backing off when a minor problem arose – that being the visit could not be a campaign event. As reported, the DoD has been clear that visits to our wounded must be non-political, and as a sitting Senator Obama had free and clear access to the troops if he left his campaign staff and the media behind (the DoD had even made arrangements for them during the visit).
Today the WaPo tries to claim McCain was wrong to highlight this insult by Obama against those who sacrificed the most for this country:
The essence of McCain’s allegation is that Obama planned to take a media entourage, including television cameras, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany during his week-long foreign trip, and that he canceled the visit when he learned he could not do so. “I know that, according to reports, that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers,” McCain said Monday night on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
The Obama campaign has denied that was the reason he called off the visit. In fact, there is no evidence that he planned to take anyone to the American hospital other than a military adviser, whose status as a campaign staff member sparked last-minute concern among Pentagon officials that the visit would be an improper political event.
Emphasis mine. John McCain is right, according to early reports the decision was reported to be a reaction to the media not being allowed to go. Those initial media reports, like all of their shoddy work, were wrong. But the story misses the point entirely.
Obama wants to command the nation and our forces. He claims it is the role of the Commander-in-Chief to give direction and make sure that direction is carried out. Clearly, he had all means at his disposal to see our wounded heroes, but he either let a campaign member (and self-absorbed general) and other events divert him from his goal. Which leaves us with one of two horrible conclusions:
(1) Either Obama did not really care at all about seeing the troops and let a minor issue derail him so he could do a photo op someplace else, or
(2) Obama has no control of his campaign, and he could not enforce his will on his underlings.
Either way Obama looks bad. I hope the SurrenderMedia keeps up their defense of this unforgivable action. Whatever the rational there is no good reason to leave wounded troops aside. The only way to stop the hemorrhaging over this despicable act is for Obama to take full responsibility and get his butt on a plane to Germany to make amends. If our troops can sacrifice life and limb for this country Obama can sacrifice a little pride and ego to make things right.
Not to worry – he won’t fix this. He’ll just let the issue fester and eat away at his image. The Messiah has been drinking from his own Kool-Aid so much now that he has become the “Presumptuous Nominee” in the yes of many:
Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee.
Obama’s inexperience is now blindingly apparent. He has lost perspective, he is craving the media adoration. He is in pure American Idol mode, ready to do perform any stunt to get attention. And the American people are becoming repulsed by it all.
Update: Obama truly is seriously in love with himself:
Obama was waxing lyrical about last week’s trip to Europe, when he concluded, according to the meeting attendee, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for.”
The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives. “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” he said, according to the source.
You are The True Messiah Wonder Boy! BTW, how many excuses can one campaign make up for their sin? The current count is 11 – with more to come for sure.
Remember Andrea Mitchell, last seen defending Obama not visiting the troops, deriding the Military’s fake interviews on the first leg of his trip in Afghanistan.
It was a planned stop and then cancelled. Throw in a hasty telephone call to the troops to minimizes the damage.
Judgement.
If I could remember where I found it said I would reference; however, the idea is common enough and it works. To keep your head from exploding over the sheer arrogance of Obama try having a little fun with it. Just take every one of his statements and add “in bed” to the ending. Kind of like you do with a Fortune Cookie.
So, “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,†in bed.
Add in that “we” really means “I” and “our” really mean “my” and his statements become quite clear.
For example,
“We are the ones we have been waiting for” equals “I am the one we have been waiting for, in bed”
His arrogance is appalling and will be his downfall.
Like all people idolized in this fashion he has come to believe his press. He really thinks he is the answer to all the world’s problems. In other words, he has the big head. Heaven help us if this naif becomes president. He would not run the country but his cohorts would. H would be lost in a daze of ignorance. I’m talking about the ones who put him up there. People like the Ayers family, Emil Jones, Jeremiah Wright, all the Palestinians he supports and is friends with. He has publicly disavowed these people but not in his heart. They would be front and center in his administration governing this country. Just think of it. A Weatherman pulling strings behind the scene. An anarchist in effect the world leader. What is wrong with the people supporting him? Do they have a death wish? Seriously?
AJ,
I know you don’t really care about truth or objectivity ever since you converted from an Independent to a die-hard GOP supporter, but for those reading your post who want more than the typical GOP kool-aid I have to point out a few discrepancies.
First of all, it is pretty pathetic that McCain has stooped so low as to use wounded soldiers as campaign fodder. Here is what McCain said about this issue in a May 2007 floor speech in the Senate:
“How can we possibly find honor in using the fate of our servicemen to score political advantage in Washington? There is no pride to be had in such efforts. We are at war, a hard and challenging war, and we do no service for the best of us-those who fight and risk all on our behalf-by playing politics with their service.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/26/mccain-to-obama-welcome-h_n_115143.html. I guess McCain’s desire to occupy the White House eventually outweighed his sense of honor or respect for our wounded soldiers.
I find it quite ironic that you consider Obama’s cancelled visit a major snub to the soldiers, but you have absolutely no problem with Bush lying and falsely claiming that he gave up golf in August of 2003 to honor our fallen soldiers. Here is a link to the transcript of Bush’s interview in which he claimed he gave up golf in August of 2003 to honor out troops and the infamous video of him playing golf in October of 2003. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/16/bush-lied-about-giving-up_n_102138.html. There is no way to spin it – the video of Bush golfing is proof positive he lied about giving golf up. And yet you said absolutely nothing about this shameful act. So it is okay to lie and pretend like you made a small sacrifice to honor our troops, but if you cancel a planned trip to see the troops it disqualifies you from being commander-in-chief?
As you are starting to acknowledge yourself, McCain’s accusations and the ad he ran on this story were false in almost all respects. There was no plan for the media to attend Obama’s military visit, which you now acknowledge (and per usual blame the MSM for McCain and your error), so therefore McCain’s central claim that Obama cancelled the trip because it wouldn’t be a photo opportunity is false. While McCain and the GOP pointed out that Obama could have attended with his Senate staff, they fail to acknowledge the fact that Obama’s Senate staff had already left Germany when the Pentagon informed him that his military advisors could not attend. McCain’s ad falsely claims that Obama went to the gym instead of visiting the troops, using the video of Obama in Iraq shooting baskets with the troops to make its point! Obama regularly visits soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, so this is not an indication of a pattern of snubbing soldiers.
Your suggestion that Obama needs to make amends and go back to Germany to visit the soldiers is laughable. After all your criticism of Obama being a ego-maniac, are you really suggesting that the troops he planned to see are sitting around the hospital crying “when is Obama going to come and visit us?” There is absolutely zero evidence that the soldiers he planned to see felt slighted or were concerned about his cancellation – ZERO. This is purely a political issue that McCain has used to his advantage, not an actual issue for the wounded soldiers themselves. But who really cares about the soldiers when there is an election to win.
Now that the lies are unraveling, you are left with arguing it is a sign that he doesn’t have control over his campaign. Is that really all you got? McCain adopts a campaign rule prohibiting lobbiest without even realizing his campaign is full of lobbiest, he can’t stop Graham from calling Americans worries about the economy whinners, and he can’t remember the difference between sunnis and shites, when the surge started or what countries border Iraq, but that is okay? Please!
Dude, he didn’t visit the wounded. End of story. It wasn’t a sufficient priority for him. Your huffing and puffing and red herrings do not remove this inconvenient fact.
Bush is the guy who was meeting with every killed service member’s family without any publicity whatsoever. So stuff it up your rear end.
what conman said.
as for the update to this post, that’s also completely wrong. the full text of what obama said was:
the washington post, meanwhile edited the quote to make it:
not how the wapo selectively edited obama’s remarks to make his actual point, that “[it] is not about me”, to make it seem like he said precisely the opposite, that it was all about him.
and it looks like old strata fell for it. oh well.
jb: So the wounded troops he visited in Iraq and Afghanistan just “don’t count”, in your opinion?
And, Bush has met with 4,124 families since 3/19/03? Really?
Two things to add to conman’s excellent comment:
1) “[T]he McCain campaign was denied a visit to a military base under the same policy back in April. Of course, there was no outcry or false outrage […] at that time.”
http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1671
2) If you’re going to use a quote to slam Obama, it might be nice to actually use the entire quote, especially when shortening it completely changes its meaning. What Obama said was:
“It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign — that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol…”
“It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign — that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol”
Can you parse this typically incoherent Obama drivel?
Germans love America, it’s not about Obama? He has become a “symbol” for America but yet it’s not “about him”?
Why is it that he can hardly make a statement which is unambiguously clear?
Sorry, this doesn’t help. Just reminds us what a bullshitter he is.
More from Jack Tapper ..
This isn’t the kind of stuff that any politician running for office as the “anti-war guy” wants anyone to know that he knows.
I mean .. now Obama knows what George Bush knows.
Even if the press was not involved and it was just a question of whether or not Obama could take a military adviser to vist the troops he still screwed up. The point is Obama could have gone by himself and he chose not to. Blaming the military for him not making the visit is so typical of Obama’s fan club. No matter what happens, it is someone else’s fault. And they are always sure that someone’s lies are “unraveling” what a hoot. The only thing unraveling is Obama’s massive ego trip. I can not remember any time when something like this was an issue. Senators and candidates manage to visit troops all the time without it turning into a circus. Unless the candidate is Obama, then there is no such thing as routine. After all he is soooo special.
And the self righteous, sanctimonious preachy quality of the man’s campaign is getting downright ridiculous.
Terrye,
You never seem to get it. Yes, Obama could have visited the soldiers by himself and he elected not to do so. But you have to factor in that it is highly unusual for a US Senator to go anywhere abroad without some kind of staff, especially when a Senator is told no staff at the last minute. It is pathetic, but that is how all of the Senators operate. As breschau pointed out, McCain didn’t visit the military hospital during one of his visits for the same reason that Obama cancelled this visit. Bush never visits the miiliary hospitals without staff. Nonetheless, if McCain and others were making the point that Obama should have made an exception in this case given how high profile his trip was then I think that would be a fair point to raise (even if I don’t agree with it).
But that is not what McCain and the GOP attack machine is doing. Instead, they outright lied about what happened and tried to make it a much bigger deal than it should have been for partisan reasons. They lied and said Obama cancelled because he couldn’t get his photo-op when the media was never invited to the visit in the first place. They lied and said he could have visited with his Senate staff when in fact his staff already went home. They lied and said he went to the gym instead when the video they used was Obama playing basketball with the soldiers in Iraq. They lied and suggested this is a typcial Obama move, when in fact Obama regularly visits wounded soldiers without any press attention. They completely overexaggerated this one single instance and turned it into an act of treason when there was no indication that the wounded soldiers themselves felt slighted in the least bit. These are not a by-product of “Obama’s massive ego trip” – these are verifieable facts.
The main problem I have is not just that they are outright lying, that is pretty standard for Republican campaign playbooks, but it is that they are doing exactly what they accuse Obama of doing. They are disrespecting our soldiers by using them to create a campaign issue that the soldiers themselves could care less about. Read McCain’s May 2007 statement again – leave the soldeiers out of the campaign. It is McCain, not Obama, that is using our wounded soldiers as campaign props to help him win the election. That is pathetic and unpatriotic. I’m glad the press is finally calling him on it and now McCain appears to be backing away from his original position.
conman:
No, you do not get it.
No one told Obama he could not bring members of his staff.
No one told Obama he could not come.
Obama made the arrangements himself weeks before and no one surprised him with any changes.
Obama could have gone to the hospital with the usual aides just like anyone else. He promised he would and then when he found out they would not change the rules for him, he said screw it.
He created this situation, he made it happen, he could have avoided the whole thing. He has no one but himself to blame. He either blew off the troops or he is a complete screw up. Neither inspires confidence.
And there is no lying.Obama has given something like three different explanations for this whole scenario thus far. So who is the liar here?
Oh yea, poor Obama. The military lies about him, the Republicans lie about him…blah blah blah.
But you go right ahead and blame it on the Republican attack machine. Just like Hillary blamed the VAst Right Wing Conspiracy for Monica.
The injustice of it all.
Power Line has a couple of posts up on this, the following is an excerpt:
At the outset, it should be noted that (as far as I can tell, though I may be wrong) Obama provided no explanation for his abrupt cancellation to officials at the military base. The military spokesperson who announced that Obama would not be visiting, stated: “Barack Obama will not be coming to us; I don’t know why.”
Common courtesy should have caused the campaign to provide an explanation for the cancellation. And beyond considerations of courtesy, political calculation would seem to dictate that, if you have a good reason for cancelling a visit, you provide it so as not to appear disrespectful. On the other hand, if you just don’t feel like it’s in your interest to come, you probably don’t explain.
The press, though, needed an explanation and, early on, campaign aide Robert Gibbs provided one. According to Gibbs, Obama decided out of respect for the hospitalized servicemen and women at Landstuhl that it would be inappropriate to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign. (ABC News, Jake Tapper’s blog, 7/24) Gibbs also claimed that the Pentagon had advised the campaign that the visit would be perceived as campaigning. (Fox News, 7/25) Along the same lines, Retired Air Force General Scott Gration, another Obama adviser, said that the campaign had decided not to make the visit after the Pentagon said the visit would be viewed as a campaign event. (USA Today, “On Politics” blog, 7/24)
This explanation, without more, makes little sense. Everything Obama did on his trip, including his visit to troops at a medical facility in Baghdad was viewed in part as a campaign event. Accordingly, top strategist David Axelrod offered a different story, claiming that the Pentagon told the campaign that Obama should not make the visit. (Chicago Sun Times, “Sweet” blog, 7/25) This would represent sufficient reason to cancel, but only if Axelrod’s statement were true. And here there were problems. For example, Gibbs did not back Axelrod up. He told reporters that the Pentagon had approved the visit, that it was “unclear†that the approval had ever been revoked, but that the Pentagon said, under military regulations, the visit would be considered “campaign related.†(The Washington Post, “The Trail,” 7/25) As discussed below, the Pentagon would later confirm that it had never advised Obama not to visit. In addition, it would contradict Gibbs’ more nuanced account.
Caught between two unsatisfactory explanations – one insufficient and the other false – the campaign attempted to shift the blame to John McCain. Thus, Andrea Mitchell reported that, according to the Obama campaign, McCain foreign policy advisers with connections to the Pentagon have “had something to do with this.†(MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/25)
The Obama campaign also introduced an additional wrinkle. It said that the Pentagon had prohibited Obama from bringing a campaign aide (Retired Gen. Gratton) with him. Obama was welcome, though, to bring along his Senate staffers who apparently had accompanied him to the hospital in Iraq. (MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/25) This story, corroborated by the Pentagon, is preferable to the vague “the Pentagon thinks I’m campaigning†and the concrete but untrue “the Pentagon says I shouldn’t come.†In this account, the Pentagon had no problem with Obama visiting as long as he didn’t bring a campaign aide.
But this explanation has an obvious problem: why didn’t Obama visit our wounded warriors without Gratton? Andrea Mitchell reported that the Obama campaign was upset with the Pentagon for imposing this condition which it speculated might not have been applied to “others.†(MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/25) While it’s not difficult to believe that Obama and his campaign objected to the Pentagon “crimping their style,” this subjective unhappiness does not seem like a plausible explanation for cancelling a visit to troops in a military hospital.
Next Obama himself got into the excuse act. In London, he reverted back to the borderline nonsensical “they’ll think it’s political†narrative. Obama stated:
I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisers, former military officer, and we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political, because he had endorsed my candidacy, but he wasn’t on the senate staff. That triggered, then, a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political. And the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not, or get caught in the cross fire between campaigns. So, rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we would not make a visit, and instead I would call some of the troops who were there. So that’s essentially the extent of the story.
Obama persisted with this line in an interview with Fox News, saying “the last thing I want to do is to in any way distract the terrific work that’s being done in terms of treating our troops by getting it fouled up with a bunch of politics.†(Fox News “Live,” 7/26)
By now the campaign had dropped its pretense that the Pentagon had prevented Obama’s visit. Thus, Gibbs told Joe Scarborough: “We never said that the Pentagon prevented us from going. What we did say was that the Pentagon considered the trip to be a campaign trip.†(MSNBC, “Morning Joe,” 7/28)
Hey UpYours
We now have an un named staffer sourcing this revision text and now it is down to one anonymous leak versus another anonymous leak..
Any body got a tape or a transcript or some big name people to say yes or no ….what is the Obama camp themself saying , last I checked they were silent on the issue.
Media Matters the Soros spin and wash machine is doing their part and the left side usual suspect blogs are making pretzels out of themselves in the process.
Obama visited Walter Reed before he left for his trip (don’t know how often he has been there) and visited injured troops in Baghdad.
But what everyone has to remember is this is a split trip.
Up until leaving Iraq is was a congressional delegation trip after that it was a campaign trip with a different set of rules.
Terrye:
“No one told Obama he could not bring members of his staff.”
“[N]o one surprised him with any changes.”
O RLY? Then how do you explain this?
“A Pentagon spokesperson confirms to me that because of longstanding Department of Defense regulations, Pentagon officials told Obama aides that he couldn’t visit the base with campaign staff.”
“It’s unclear how Obama could have made the visit at all, given the Pentagon’s directives. No Senate staff was on the trip, and the Obama camp says they received the Pentagon’s directives on Wednesday, after they were already abroad.”
Sooo… wanna try again?
breschau:
They said he could not visit with campaign staff. But his entire staff is not campaign staff. His aides are not campaign staff. He could have gone by himself as far as that is concerned. He could have made all the arrangements and had all his questions answered days ahead of time too. If he can so completely screw up a simple visit like this, how will he manage to run the White House?
I mean really breschau, do you think that the only aides Senators have are their campaign staff? Do you think that all they do is run for office and give speeches in foreign countries?
Terry, judging by his most recent behavior, that is all BHO does 😉
The pentagon has been steadfast with their demand of no CAMPAIGN STAFF during these visits, and BHO knew that before hand. He was more than welcome with senate staff and no media to turn it into a campaign photo op. This has been a long-standing policy. But, it appears BHO decided not to go if he couldn’t get any campaign benefit out of it. Maybe not his intent, but the damage is done, and the mistakes continue. The lipstick is falling off this pig.