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Well, Landstuhl *was* asking Obama to leave his media entourage behind.

That'd be like taking my toddler's security blanket away from him, for goodness' sake!

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  July 25th, 2008 at 12:44 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Via Patterico and [Protein Wisdom] (http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=12998) we see a bit more on Senator Obama’s sense of priorities.

From NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube
A U.S. military official tells NBC News they were making preparations for Sen. Barack Obama to visit wounded troops at the Landstuhl Medical Center at Ramstein, Germany on Friday, but “for some reason the visit was called off.”

One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit.”

The official said “We didn’t know why” the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. “He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him.”

I believe that we can forgive said official for that little white lie; he knows full well why the request was withdrawn, and so do you. It’s for the same reason why the Obama campaign whined to Jake Tapper about his perfectly-obvious comment that they were shilling out Obama’s speech for campaign contributions: an all-consuming, comprehensive, nigh-obsessive need to control all aspects of the narrative about Senator Barack Obama. Down to the molecular level, apparently.

One does wonder what they fear.

Moe Lane

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  • Dave_in_Fla

    They fear Barack the walking gaffe machine.

    I know, I know, it was a rhetorical question.

  • Commodore

    there was too much of a risk of some kind of uncomfortable confrontation with a soldier.

  • arel

    Obama should be ashamed of himself. However it comes as no surprise. I have a friend who’s husband is in Afghanistan and he emailed her about Obama’s visit. He got off the plane got directly into a bullet proof vehicle where he was taken to meet with the Major General. When he got out of the vehicle soldiers where lined up to shake his hand and he blew them off. After the meeting the vehicles took him to the “ClamShell” where he had his big basketball photo shoot. After the big photo shoot he again blew off the opportunity to talk to soldiers and to thank them for their service.
    I don’t know about anyone else but I for one do not want this man as Commander and Chief of my country.

  • Mark_Kilmer

    and does not reflect in any way Barack Obama, his campaign, or his priorities.

    Captain Ed was on this one, as well.

    This makes the decision track very clear. Obama and his team set up the visits to military installations before going overseas. After seeing how the media got excluded in Iraq and Afghanistan, they decided it wasn?t worth traveling to Ramstein and Landstuhl to visit the severely wounded troops because they couldn?t bring the campaign and get the photo ops they wanted. Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin

    Barry and Hillary care for the military only as a useful political tool.

  • Moe_Lane

    I’ve heard no complaints about her diligence wrt the Armed Services Committee, and she certainly hasn’t needed to be shamed into going to Afghanistan and Iraq.

  • Marcus_Traianus

    Good campaign photo opportunity this is. Obama;

    • Does not support our mission

    • Spends the entire primary dismissing General Petreaus and our commanders (continues to take money from the General BETRAY US crowd)

    • Demurs on the historic job these guys have done

    • Voted against funding the troops

    What a despicable attempt at political campaigning this was, using heroes he doesn?t support as backdrop. This is the odious man people will vote for? Obama is the worst of all liberal Marxist panjandrums.

    Want to support the heroes at Landstuhl? Try here or here.

  • Carol_in_Austin

    Let the spin begin. I just heard Andrea Mitchell reporting that Obama “hoped to go to Ramstein, Germany and visit US troops here before he left the country. But the Pentagon said he could not do that while on the political leg of this trip, even though Obama had visited injured troops earlier this week in Iraq when he was travelling with the Congressional delegation.”

    Blame it on the Pentagon, imagine that.

  • derechista

    Barack Obama’s fact-finding mission to the Middle East and Europe has devolved into a presumptuous victory parade. It reminds me of President Bush’s landing on the aircraft carrier, complete with the banner with the now-famous statement.

    The Obama campaign’s distribution of campaign material and posting banners with the O logo on foreign soil causes me to see him as equally presumptuous. Has Obama been crowned yet? Did I miss something?

    I just hope the average American has the same reaction.

  • bnb614

    In his speech in Berlin, Obama said that he came “not as a political candidate….”

    Then when he turned down a chance to visit wounded troops in Landstuhl he said it wouldn’t be appropriate to do so as a candidate in a campaign.

    Can someone with video editing experience please make a YouTube commercial of Obama back before the vote on the surge railing against it, voting against, with footage from his trip to Iraq saying the surge worked but that he still wouldn’t have supported it? With clips of him badgering Katie Couric and Jake Tapper for trying to get an honest answer?

    Between all those interviews, his flip flops, his Landstuhl excuse, running against Obama is like trying to box with a ghost. You can’t swing a punch because you never know where the opponent is or will be.

  • blooch

    but then I figured that many of the soldiers there were in no condition to wound Obama’s conscience, and most of them had probably not even heard of his recent derogoatory comments concerning their irrelevancy to progress in Iraq.

    I don’t know how the informal military grapevine works in such a case, but I’ll bet his staff discovered that the soldiers were able to listen to Rush on AFR, and that alone was enough send him skipping off for the Ku’damm.

    Either way his visit went down would have been a win for him; His media blanket would have scrubbed any unpleasant confrontation had they been allowed, or, in the absence of MSM, his loyal retinue would have contained the damage. The wild card was a single soldier talking to Rush, and that broke the deal.

  • blooch

    will not make the stretch required by your analogy. Be careful, derechista. Carrier landings are dangerous for rookie pilots.

  • rbdwiggins

    The trip was one, long, choreographed commercial for the Obama campaign.

    Unfortunately for Obama, but truly fortunately for the American people, his veil of obfuscation has slipped a little more.

    Recent polling from the battleground states shows movement toward Sen. McCain and a weakening of support for Obama.

    It seems Obama has squandered a great deal of campaign cash on this trip trying to convince the American people that he is something he is not, i.e, qualified to be Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces.

    Note: When Obama decides to take his job as seriously as Sen. Clinton, I’ll consider using Senator before Obama’s name. Until then, he’s just another typical politician, whose sense of entitlement betrays his arrogance.

    To answer Moe’s rhetorical question: His handlers are afraid the aforementioned veil of obfuscation will be blown away, Obama will be exposed as a fraud, and Sen. McCain will become the 44th President of the United States, winning in a landslide.

  • bk

    I was surprised. She said something after one of the earlier legs along the lines of: “The Obama people must feel it was mission accomplished after…”

  • bk

    He said he has too much respect for the troops to visit them. Huh? He said he doesn’t want it perceived as a photo op. Huh? There won’t be any press except a military photographer, and I bet he could ask that any pictures not be made public.

  • Crowe

    I guarantee this was standard procedure and not a fear of a confrontation. Our soldiers have too much dignity to have such a confrontation — especially with a sitting Senator. They may heve been less-than-enthused to receive him, but they would not have been confrontational.

    It’s standard procedure to disallow pure and blatant campaigning in military venues, just as it is standard procedure to disallow such from the Senate floor or the White House or any other government property (phones, stationery, etc.).

    Thing is, the military photographers are pretty good at taking good pictures. Obama would have been able to use some of those, no doubt… but it clearly wasn’t enough.

  • blooch

    And judging by Carol In Austin’s comment above, Andrea probably considers her spin for Obama “Mission Accomplished” too.