McCain Ad Bashes Obama for Not Visiting Troops Using Footage of Obama Visiting Troops

[Heisenberg]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/new-mccain-ad-b.html

New McCain Ad Bashes Obama for Not Visiting Troops Using Footage of Obama Visiting Troops
July 26, 2008 10:53 PM

Sen. Barack Obama's landing at Chicago's Midway airport this evening was greeted with the news that rival Sen. John McCain launched a new TV ad attacking Obama for that canceled visit to see wounded troops in Germany.

Obama told me earlier today that the trip was canceled because of "a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political. And the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns."

McCain's ad asserts that Obama "made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."

The McCain campaign provides no evidence for the assertion that being told he couldn't bring media had anything to do with the trip's cancellation.

Oddly, when discussing Obama's trip to the gym, the ad uses footage of Obama playing basketball with US troops in Kuwait over the weekend.

- jpt

UPDATE: Obama campaign spokeswoman Linda Douglass says, "We told military officials explicitly that Senator Obama had absolutely no attention of bringing any members of the media or photographers in with him to visit the wounded warriors. In all of our communications with the military, we stressed that this was to be a private visit by Senator Obama."

[ologan]

If it was important to him,he could have gone on his own to visit the wounded without all the press entourage. I guess it wasn't that important.

[poke]

i bet if he had gone there would have been just as many posts criticizing him for doing it.....please hurry November

[ZeroClub]

i bet if he had gone there would have been just as many posts criticizing him for doing it.....please hurry November

There is a lot of truth to that.

[ChldsPlay]

i bet if he had gone there would have been just as many posts criticizing him for doing it.....please hurry November

Who would be criticizing him for that? It's what he should have done, and what he was supposed to do.

If he had tried to make a circus out of it he could be criticized for that maybe, but he wasn't really going to be allowed to do that, so he did the worst thing he could do. Be himself.

[poke]

Who would be criticizing him for that? It's what he should have done, and what he was supposed to do.

If he had tried to make a circus out of it he could be criticized for that maybe, but he wasn't really going to be allowed to do that, so he did the worst thing he could do. Be himself.

be realistic, you know as well as i do that some are gonna criticize those in the public eye no matter what they do....mccain or obama
you may or may not be one who does that but you cannot honestly believe
that some here would not have criciticized obama had he gone to see the troops, had a picture taken and then those folks would be saying he was just taking a photo op.

[ChldsPlay]

be realistic, you know as well as i do that some are gonna criticize those in the public eye no matter what they do....mccain or obama
you may or may not be one who does that but you cannot honestly believe
that some here would not have criciticized obama had he gone to see the troops, had a picture taken and then those folks would be saying he was just taking a photo op.

Well it's hard for it to be a photo op if they're not allowed to go in with him isn't it? Since they aren't allowed, the troops wouldn't be there for a photo op. The fact that he didn't go implies heavily that he was only going to go only because it WAS going to be a photo op. When that fell through he didn't care anymore. If he had gone then he would have visited the troops and shown them respect like he should, and there would have been no photo op to criticize. Instead he just comes out looking like a *******. Which he is.

Of course the only rumblings about photo ops seem to have come from Obama's camp and his defenders.