Pentagon Confirms That It Told Obama He Couldn't Visit Army Base With Campaign Staff

[kevinmc]

TPM - Greg Sargent

I've just gotten clarification from the Pentagon on what really happened with regard to Barack Obama's canceled visit to an Army base in Germany, something the McCain campaign has been using to hit Obama since yesterday.

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. This left Obama with little choice but to cancel the trip, since the plan to visit with campaign aides had been in the works for weeks.

The Obama campaign yesterday announced that it had decided to cancel the visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, saying that it would be "inappropriate" to make such a visit as part of a campaign trip.

The McCain camp has nonetheless been using Obama's canceled trip to insinuate that he's anti-troops. "Barack Obama is wrong," McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers said in a statement yesterday. "It is never 'inappropriate' to visit our men and women in the military."

But it turns out that the Pentagon did in fact tell Obama that in this case, it was not only "inappropriate," but against DOD rules, for him to conduct the visit with campaign staff.

"We have longstanding Department of Defense policy in regards to political campaigns and elections," Pentagon spokesperson Elizabeth Hibner told me. "We informed the Obama staff that he was more than welcome to visit as Senator Obama, with Senate staff. However, he could not conduct the visit with campaign staff."...........................

[MoJoWorkin]

1. A Hit piece on this lie in on AOL homepage now.

They are saying Obama chose not to go and the military said he could. GOD I hate the media!

[kevinmc]

2. I just went through the headlines and see the big News outlets don't know ...

how to use a phone and contact the Pentagon like TPM did.

Sucks having to try and out yell the MSM. I wish every DU member would set up a blogger account and just post the real news ... it would flood Google and put these false stories down.

[onenote]

6. what part of the AOL story is incorrect?

I don't think this story is a big deal, but I do think that somewhere along the line, someone screwed up here in that the smart move would've been to go ahead with the visit without campaign aides or press. If its the campaign's position that what the military is saying is not what they were told, they need to say that.

[ericgtr]

8. AOL is a joke, they still have Hillary beating Obama in the primaries

Don't believe me? Look at their web poll, it's gotta be true!

No offense to older people but it just happens to be their base, people on dialup from the 90's who cling to Bush's failed policy. They are the 29% that approve of the president.

[RamboLiberal]

3. He could go as a senator w/o the cameras and staff

IMHO it was a rare misstep by the campaign and a misunderstanding between them and the Pentagon.

They need to get out there and do a mea culpa and say we screwed up on the understanding. Then as last part of trip send the campaign staff home and make a sidetrip by Obama to the hospital before he flys home. Or if they can't send the staff home before Obama let them go do something touristy for a few hours while Obama goes to the hospital.

[onenote]

4. I tend to agree. Why was it so important that he go with campaign aides

If he had said that he would go privately -- accompanied by DOD officials and no one else -- no press, no aides, etc., it would've been a very smart move. I'm very surprised that they didn't just do that.

[highplainsdem]

5. I agree. He should have gone there without his campaign staff.

[RamboLiberal]

7. I think it was a staff screwup

Person in charge of this or a minion didn't explain to Obama that he could still go w/o the campaign staff and cameras.

And of course the RW was desparately looking for a "dissed the troops" talking point.

Then we got that stupid email circulating supposedly from some "white soldier" Obama bypassed in Afghanistan to the "hoops photo-op". Nothing they can do about this one except try to debunk. We'll have this idiocy and smears.

[democrattotheend]

9. His Senate staff was probably not on the trip

I guess he could have gone completely alone, but he would have had to find another method of transportation other than his campaign plane. With a Secret Service detail as big as Obama's he can't just hop on the subway.

I suppose if he really wanted to commission a plane or driver at taxpayer expense he could have.

[onenote]

10. I wonder if that's the case. Wasn't it being claimed that this wasn't a "political" trip.

Obviously it was, but I would be surprised if he didn't have some of his Senate staff with him as well.

[Windy]

12. You need to get your facts straight! He planned to go by himself!!! He was still rebuffed!!!

One may wonder why and who changed Pentagon's mind? May be Pentagon just was playing plain election politics?

How about GOP and McCain?

Well, Andrea Mitchell reports that the cancellation of the hospital trip was caused by ... yeah, you guessed it right, McCain.

She broke the news during today's Morning Joe.

The background on the military flap is that they had clearly planned a trip to Ramstein . They were planning to visit the injured troops. And then the Pentagon explained that they couldn't go as part of a political trip. The Obama campaign thought that they could go, leave the press corps on the tarmac, and then take off with military escort and make this one last visit. As he did in Iraq, by the way. He visited a casualty unit in the Green Zone, without photographers, as part of the congressional delegation. But the military said that the rules are that he could only go as part of a previously-arranged congressional delegation, to Ramstein

Clearly, people in the campaign are really angry. They had wanted this to be the final stop on the trip here in Germany, and to do it without the press corps, just to do it on his own. But the objections of the military are that he is now being staffed by campaign aides, not by his Senate staff, who are the people of course with him when he went with Hagel and Jack Reed in Iraq. So, you know, the anger here in the campaign is pretty intense at the Pentagon. They feel that the military are drawing some lines--they're not saying this publicly of course--but drawing lines that they might have drawn for other people. He was planning to just go by himself, not with cameras, not with any entourage, as he had done in Walter Reed in the past in Washington, as he did in Iraq. Joe

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's curious, if that's the case, why the campaign didn't make that announcement yesterday, and allowed stories to go like this. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of he said/she said in the days to come about this.

MITCHELL: But they thought that they couldn't win. Yeah. They thought that they were, you know, you know, no-win situation, that the Pentagon, perhaps the military with cooperation from some Republican operatives and, that's the sort of scuttlebutt, that there have been some foreign policy advisers of John McCain with connections in the Pentagon who had something to do with this. But that is, perhaps, just the normal political paranoia of the season.

http://newsbusters.org /...

There is a video too.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com /...

[rucky]

11. Because his Kuwait visit looked sooo bad for...

morale?

the GOP?

[Barack_America]

13. Very interesting bit from the article...

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.

Just in time to prevent them from getting Senate aides over there, forcing them to cancel the trip.

[Windy]

14. Please see my post above. n/t

[ErinBerin84]

15. I watched the beginning of the Race to the White House

Andrea didn't sound as outrageously GOP as she usually does (at least on this topic anyways...she said McCain "found his voice" on the surge today, haha) when she was talking to David Gregory about this, even said something like the constant spinning coming out of the Republicans on this issue is unwarranted (she didn't say unwarranted, but she insinuated it). And she said that Obama had visited wounded soldiers in the green zone, but they didn't even confirm it really and were very conscious of not having any pictures taken, etc.