So tonight, I came home and checked CNN as I usually do before I call it a night. I generally just scan the headlines to see what's going on. I saw the main story called "McCain camp pounces on Obama troop visit cancellation". It seemed rather baited, so of course I had to read it. What a mistake....
Sen. John McCain's campaign lashed out at Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday for canceling a visit to an American military base in Germany on Thursday.
I kinda heard this earlier in the evening but ignored it. Now I read on.....
The incident is representative of the delicacy with which the Obama campaign has attempted to navigate the Illinois senator's entire journey abroad, at once staging elaborate photo-ops beamed back to the American media while at insisting that Obama's trip is not a political one by definition.
Wow, this is from CNN? That sounds pretty one-sided. S-o-o-o-o, I guess he is "damned if you do, damned if you don't" here, right????
The visit was expected to come after Obama's speech in Berlin, Germany, but the campaign suddenly announced Thursday that the stop had been canceled, saying Obama had determined that it would be "inappropriate."
Oh, "inappropriate", hm? What, you put quotes around it because it is "hands off"???
Senior Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said Friday that retired Major Gen. Scott Gration, a policy adviser to the campaign, received a call from Pentagon officials earlier in the week expressing concerns about the trip -- specifically because Obama was heading there on his campaign plane and campaign staff members would be accompanying him on the visit.
After speaking with Gration, the campaign decided to cancel the trip. Gibbs said Obama is "comfortable with the decision" because he did not want to make the troops part of a campaign event.
......
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said later Friday that the Pentagon did not explicitly say Obama should not visit the base but was concerned with whether his capacity there would be one of a presidential candidate, not a senator.
"We do have certain policy guidelines for political campaigns and elections. And what is appropriate and what is not appropriate in those situations. But the Pentagon certainly did not tell the senator that he could not visit Landstuhl," Whitman said.
Oh, so you "certainly" did not tell him to stay away, Mr. Whitman? Sounds pretty flaky to me. Obama has plans to visit the troops until you call, then suddenly changes his mind, and you had nothing to do with it? Mmm hmmmmm....
You know, WTF??!?!? This is the most ridiculous thing I have read in a looooong time. This entire story is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If Obama DID visit those troops as he had originally intended, you can bet your life that every single conservative in a 5,000-mile radius would have exclaimed that he was doing it to score points, it was a cheap political shot, etc etc blah blah blah.
But the fact that he was notified by THE PENTAGON (no less!) that they were concerned that it may be considered a bad idea, a political stunt, not legitimate in his capacity as a senator, etc etc, and then Obama AGREED to take the high road and stay out of anything that could be misinterpreted.......so he's wrong either way???
We are now getting into complete unhinged lunacy, devoid of any rational thought. I know it has been coming out of the conservatives non-stop recently, and I have been able to laugh at it until just recently. But now I'm really getting tired of the desperation, the ridiculousness, the pettiness. I don't know how much more I can take of this crap.....