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Edited on Fri Jul-25-08 05:24 PM by cryingshame
please visit dailykos dairy of author for live links to news bits. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/25/8227/32024/605/556729Pentagon sabotaged Obama's military hospital visit. Report sees McCain's hand. by karpaty lviv Fri Jul 25, 2008 at 05:11:11 AM PDT First, it was Condi Rice's memo to American consulates abroad, now Pentagon... There was much of noise last night over Der Spiegel's report that Obama camp cancelled his previously planned trip to the hopsital in Landstuhl, Germany. Rush, Hannity, all had crap to talk about. Some at Faux Noise suggested the trip was cancelled because there was no photo op, developing a new meme against Obama. It is now confirmed that Pentagon played a crucial role in cancellation: "Senator Obama had hoped to and had every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country," retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration, an Obama adviser, said in a statement. "We learned from the Pentagon night that the visit would be viewed instead as a campaign event. Senator Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors percieved as a campaign event...and decided instead not to go."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...
Update Politco has more details from Obama's campaign.
Intially, a couple of weeks ago, Pentagon cleared the visit.
Senior strategist Robert Gibbs said the visit to the military hospital in Germany had been in the works for about three weeks, with Gration serving as the campaign's contact with the Pentagon.
The Pentagon cleared the Obama plan to land at the base on either July 15 or 16, Gibbs said. The plane needed the clearance because of restrictions on landing nonmilitary aircraft there, he said.
But, only one day before the planned visit, Pentagon overruled itself:
But then on Wednesday, Gration told Obama aides that the Pentagon had informed him that the visit could be viewed as a campaign stop.
"They cited a regulation," Gibbs said of their point of contact, described as legislative affairs in the office of the secretary.
http://www.politico.com/...
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/...
Update
One interesting question: do Pentagon rules against campaigning by a candidate (vs. mere visits by a sitting senator) equally apply to the McCain's campaign as well?
Not always, said CNN in April, after McCain secured GOP nomination:
Stops by Sen. John McCain at U.S. Navy bases this week prompted internal Navy and Pentagon discussions, according to a military official with direct knowledge of the discussions.
The official said the discussions regarding the McCain appearances, including Wednesday's speech and private meetings at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where his son is midshipman, "were not contentious" and there is no allegation of any wrongdoing.
With Department of Defense rules prohibiting political campaigning on military bases, it was determined that in some cases McCain could visit the installations as a senator but could not engage in any political activity or have news media present.
http://edition.cnn.com/...
Update
"First read" reports that this morning Obama spoke with wounded troops in Germany via phone. |
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