Apparently Barock Obama hates our troops almost as much as he loves socialism, mandatory financing for every Planned Parenthood and raising your taxes so high you’ll be paying taxes on your taxes. Talk radio and the conservative websites are madder than a member of the Thomas Moore Law Center at a gay pride parade because instead of visiting wounded troops at a hospital in Landstuhl, Germany on his recent European trip he decided to work out.
Which of course like most things that originate on talk radio and the conservative blogs and then seeps into the mainstream media is that these charges are false and misleading. Even if they were true should it even be a big deal? Let’s investigate.
Unfortunately like the war in Iraq, there was no end in site for this PR packaged bullshit after the above mentioned because this was just the beginning of what I believe was a coordinated and meticulously planned campaign to attack the Senator from Chicago. Again according to ABC News, a McCain press release from retired Army Lt. Col. Joe Repya criticized Obama the next day for deciding to work out instead of visiting wounded soldiers. Repya said “Barack Obama had scheduled a visit with wounded American troops who have served with honor and distinction in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he broke that commitment, instead flitting from one European capital to the next.”
Because this is America and since this sort of asinine bullshit gets hammered into the general public consciousness until some other issue materializes which can then be used to verbally destroy a candidate this was not the end of this non story. Later on the same day the McCain campaign released an ad that hammered Obama stating the only people in this world Obama hates more than the troops are the troops that have been injured in battle.
The political ad entitled Troops states “And now, he made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras. John McCain is always there for our troops. McCain. Country first." Of course, since it is McCain’s ad when the line “John McCain is always there for our troops,” the ominous xylophone music stops playing and the I am a patriotic music starts playing to coincide with a picture of McCain standing in front of the American Flag.
There are two things that piss me off about this ad. The first one is that they are not true. The contents of the ad are one hundred percent false when it comes to the reason why Obama did not visit the wounded troops in Germany. The second thing about this ad that makes me upset is that even if it were true, which again one hundred percent bullshit, should this really be something that should be a qualifying factor in a political campaign for someone who is running for president?
Obama did go to the gym but according to his campaign he goes to the gym daily. What is really lame if you ask me is that in the Troops ad it shows Obama playing basketball with the troops during his European trip in Kuwait. So I don’t think it could be said that Obama does not want to spend time with the troops as this video clearly shows him doing so and having a good time while doing it.
What the McCain camp is insinuating is that Obama will only spend time with the troops if the press corpse is around to document it. The Pentagon’s policy is that there can be no press and nobody related to the campaign with him when he visits the wounded. Obama had scheduled for weeks in advance a trip to this hospital in Germany to visit the wounded but canceled it at the last minute so it wouldn’t seem like a political event because the general who would have gone with him was considered a campaign advisor. So the right wing media predictably explodes saying that because he couldn’t bring the press with him Obama said fuck it and hit up the gym.
The only problem with this is that no one can read Obama’s mind except maybe that Crossing Over guy. If this were the case why did Obama make the press sit in his campaign van when he visited wounded troops at Walter Reed hospital on June 28th? Why did he not bring the press along with him when he visited wounded troops in Baghdad earlier in his European trip?
Obama later explained why they decided to cancel his visit. It was because Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jonathan Scott Gration is considered a campaign advisor and him going in with Obama would have broken the rules set up by the Pentagon. He never planned on taking the cameras in with him as McCain’s Troop ad implies. Obama later stated “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.”
(What I find really funny, and I don’t think anyone in the media is picking this up is that isn’t McCain and all the conservatives who are mocked outraged about this silly story the ones who are turning the wounded troops into a political issue?)
Of course Obama still could have gone to the hospital with just his Secret Service detail and leave Gration behind but that doesn’t change the fact that these allegations about Obama are untrue. What I don’t understand is what the big deal is?
When did visiting wounded troops turn into one of the most important things a presidential candidate has to do to prove to the electorate that he has the skills necessary to be president?
That last statement might have seemed a little harsh so that is why I will withhold my home address so you don’t know where to firebomb me. It sucks that these troops were injured in battle, but a candidate visiting the troops, wounded or not, should be one of the last things that running through your mind when you go into the voting booth this November. How about who has the best plans on fixing the horrible economy, gas prices, hell, even the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? This overblown controversy over nothing should not be getting all the attention it has been getting in the press because it means nothing. It is simple to understand why these ads are so successful in this country because if you can effectively convey Obama hates the troops you can than make people jump to the conclusion that he hates America plus it is easier for a news organization to cover something like this than complex economic policy.
What I find really humorous about the whole situation is that Obama was against the invasion of Iraq from the very beginning so if it were up to him there would be no wounded troops there because there would be no occupation in Iraq. It is Obama and not McCain that wants to pull the troops out of Iraq, which would severely limit the amount of injured troops over in Iraq (not to mention troop deaths). Shouldn’t those whose policies create more troop injuries be the ones who visit and possibly justify to them why they were and still are over there in harms way. That is why I want to bring attention to and honor our Vice President Dick Chenney because he is the perfect example of someone who goes out of his way for the wounded troops.
Unlike Obama Dick Cheney loves our country and our troops because he agreed not only to meet with wounded troops but perform a speech as well. Dick Cheney’s office originally agreed to meet with the Disabled American Veterans association in Las Vegas in August at 8:30 in the morning without all the press Obama surely would have brought with him. Chenney loves the troops so much that once they arrived he would not have let them leave. According to the New York Daily Press, “His staff insisted the sick vets be sequestered for two hours before Cheney's arrival and couldn't leave until he'd finished talking.”
But these damn disabled troops decided that they didn’t want Cheney to come anymore. Why? Because they are ungrateful. Here you have a grand gesture on Dick’s part that goes out of his way to speak to these wounded veterans. Many of these veteran’s were wounded in either Iraq or Afghanistan and many others were critically wounded in wars dating back to World War Two. Cheney’s office only to insure that all the wounded veterans would be on time I’m sure required the sick and wounded veterans to be sequestered two hours prior to his speech and not to be let out until his speech was finished because he knows how hard it is for some of them to get there and he didn’t want them to miss one word in which I’m sure would have been a magnificent speech.
“Word got back to us … that this would be a prerequisite,” said the Veteran’s Executive Director, David Gorman, who noted the meeting hall doesn’t have any rest rooms. “We told them it just wasn’t acceptable.”
So Cheney treats veterans like they are deranged psychopaths who might go John Rambo on him but at least he is not bringing camera crews with him like Obama who only visits the wounded troops when it scores him cheap political points. I guess in the end it’s the thought that counts.
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