Oh well look on the bright side you right wing conservative whack job if your boy McBush wins he'll have plenty of chances to visit dying soldiers in Iraq and soon Iran and probably a few more countries if your right wing conservative war machine has it's way.
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Q: We would have stayed on the plane, would there have been any pool report?
Gibbs: There may have been, I don't know if we ever came to a decision on that.
Obama "More than Welcome"
At first, it seemed the Obama camp was blaming the Pentagon for the cancellation. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jonathan Scott Gration, an Obama adviser who had planned to accompany him to Landstuhl, issued a statement saying, "We learned from the Pentagon last night that the visit would be viewed instead as ... a campaign event." That prompted a response from Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, who said, "Sen. Obama is more than welcome to visit Landstuhl or any other military hospital around the world. ... But he has to do so, just as any other senator has to do so, in his official capacity. It is not acceptable to do so as a candidate." Los Angeles Times reporters Michael Finnegan and Peter Spiegel went on to quote Morrell as saying, "In an election year ... I don't believe that any candidate is allowed to visit a DOD facility with press."
Gibbs, and later Obama himself, then confirmed that it was the Obama campaign and not the Pentagon that decided to scrub the visit. Obama told the press that he had never planned to take reporters inside: "We were treating it the same way we treat a visit to Walter Reed ... without any fanfare whatsoever." And he said the discovery that Gration would not be allowed to come prompted the cancellation.
Obama: And we got notice that [Gration] 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.
We note here that Obama might still have gone on the visit, leaving Gration behind and accompanied only by Secret Service security. But with or without Gration, there would have been no news reporters or news photographers to record the visit.
An Ad Re-Run
The McCain ad repeats the claim that Obama has not held "a single hearing on Afghanistan." As we've already noted, both candidates have less-than-stellar records when it comes to attending Senate hearings on Afghanistan. The ad also repeats the misleading statement that Obama "voted against funding our troops." As we've noted before, Obama voted in favor of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan all but once since he was sworn in.
Footnote: McCain's campaign repeated its allegation again today, issuing a statement in the name of retired Army helicopter pilot and McCain campaign surrogate Michael J. Durant, saying Obama's visit "was canceled after it became clear that campaign staff, and the traveling press corps, would not be allowed to accompany Senator Obama." (Emphasis added.) As we've already noted, no cameras or press were planned.
Reprinted with the permission of factcheck.org
Sources
"Today on the presidential campaign trail." The Associated Press, 29 June 2008.
Department of Defense. Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces. Washington: GPO, 2008.
Finnegan, Michael and Peter Spiegel. Obama's cancellation of a military hospital visit leaves unanswered questions. 25 July 2008. The Los Angeles Times: Top of the Ticket, 28 July 2008.
Miklaszewski, Jim. Gration and the Landstuhl Controversy. 25 July 2008. MSNBC First Read Blog, 28 July 2008.
© 2008
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