Sorry, this is going to be short, but it's extremely newsworthy and I wanted to get it up here, as it is huge news.
Chuck Hagel has outright said John McCain's lying ad about Obama's visit is an "inappropriate" ad.
On Face the Nation this morning, after Senator Reed defended Senator Obama's not going to the military hospital in Germany, Senator Hagel followed up and went well over what Reed said.
On the visit: "it would have been inappropriate" to do so after the Congressional part of the trip was done and it was done with campaign funds. In Hagel's words, it was the right decision.
On the ad: "It is not appropriate."
While John McCain might not have any integrity left, Senator Hagel has enough for both of them.
UPDATE: Another huge one!
Question: Have you decided who you are going to vote for?
Senator Hagel: "I HAVE NOT DECIDED."
UPDATE x2
Halperin has some of the transcript here:
BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator Reed, now you’ve done a lot of these trips. They call them "codels," "congressional delegations," go. Are you ever allowed to take cameras when you go in to visit wounded troops? I thought that was sort of the general rule that everybody knew about.
JACK REED: I don’t think Senator Obama would have done that. Senator Hagel, Senator Obama and I visited the combat support hospital at Baghdad to thank those nurses, those doctors, to see patients that were there, to bring a bit of greetings from home and profound thanks. That should be in the ad that Senator McCain is running. I think Senator Obama made a very wise choice. Any suggestion that a visit to a military hospital would be political, he made the wise choice not to go. But when you were in Baghdad we made a point at the end of a very exhausting day to go in and see these magnificent young Americans and those doctors and nurses that give such tremendous care without a lot of fanfare, just to say thanks. He did it-the same thing. We went-we didn’t stay in Kabul. We went to Jalalabad to see the soldiers of the 173rd. We stopped in Basra to see our soldiers down there. We went into Anbar province to see soldiers there. That is a completely distorted, and, I think, inappropriate advertisement.
CHUCK HAGEL: Let me add to that. As you know, Bob, the congressional delegation that you referred to ended when we parted in Jordan. At that point, it was a political trip for Senator Obama. I think it would have been inappropriate for him and certainly he would have been criticized by the McCain people and the press and probably should have been if on a political trip in Europe paid for by political funds-not the taxpayers-to go, essentially, then and be accused of using our wounded men and women as props for his campaign. I think the judgment there-and I don’t know the facts by the way. I know what you’ve just read. No one has asked me about it other than what you’ve just asked about. But I think it would be totally inappropriate for him on a campaign trip to go to a military hospital and use those soldiers as props. So I think he probably, based on what I know, he did the right thing. We saw troops everywhere we went on the congressional delegation. We went out of our way to see those troops. We wanted to see those troops. And that’s part of our job to see those troops, by the way, and listen to those troops, Bob. And we did.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think that ad was appropriate?
CHUCK HAGEL: I do not think it was appropriate.
BOB SCHIEFFER: You do not.
CHUCK HAGEL: I do not.