Pentagon Confirms That It Told Obama He Couldn't Visit Army Base With Campaign Staff

[annabanana]

"It's unclear how Obama could have made the visit at all, given the Pentagon's directives. No Senate staff was on the trip, and the Obama camp says they received the Pentagon's directives on Wednesday, after they were already abroad"
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/pentagon_confirms_that_it_told.php

(I guess he could have caught a cab and gone over there all by himself......)

[speedoo]

1. See "Why didn't McCain visit the troops in March?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6546074&mesg_id=6546074


McCain's hypocrisy and desperation on display for all to see.

[Jim__]

2. McCain has a new ad out attacking Obama on this point.

MSNBC was praising McCain's ad and said there didn't appear to be any truth to the Obama campaign's claim that he couldn't visit the injured troops.

[malaise]

3. That won't stop the talking points

Rethugs are desperate.

[janetblond]

4. Hello? When's the $#!T@SS media gonna report THAT!!?? nt

hmmm .. ??

[livingon]

5. yes, he could have gone without the staff and photographers.

from the op:
(I guess he could have caught a cab and gone over there all by himself......)

[annabanana]

10. please check a map

It is not next door.

[jbnow]

35. Photographers? Why do you think he'd do that?

He didn't even tell the media let alone have any pictures when he visited wounded troops at start of trip. (They found out from another source)
This wasn't a campaign stop but the Pentagon said it was because the campaign was paying for this part of trip. The only staff that was going was an ex-military guy who wanted to see them too.
The Pentagon made the visit sound inappropriate.

Obama campaign is not who told us about embassies getting calls not to assist group even if they asked, about workers being told they couldn't go see Obama even on their own time...do we think this was so innocent?

If he had gone the wording would have been different and the attacks on him going against the Pentagons wishes and using the wounded troops as campaign props would have been harsh.
He likely didn't want to get the wounded in the middle of this dispute

[sarge43]

6. Ask not what the troops can do for you ....

These photo ops with the soldiers prove nothing. In fact they're a pain in the ass for the troops. The question to be asked is what has the candidate/official done for them.

And no, I'm not slamming Obama. I am slammng using the military as a campaign poster backdrop.

[bean fidhleir]

37. Well said! (nt)

[sarge43]

38. Thanks bean. n/t

[KharmaTrain]

7. It Was A Set-Up...Either Way He Loses

At least when it comes to the right wing hate machine. Remember, they need something/anything to try to pour water on Obama's trip and distract from their own inept candidate cratering. The more I'm reading the more I see this as a set up that Obama couldn't have escaped...no matter what he did it would be food for their spin machine.

Be assured if he had gone to Landstuhl, he would have been castigated today for using the troops as a backdrop...so pick your talking point...and one gladly set up by the State Department and DOD. This is a repugnican manufactured pinata that the Obama campaign is best to avoid playing into. They presented the facts and so be it. Going on from here on out gives this non-story legs.

Now that the Senator is safely back, time to consentrate on the economic mess that boooshie's created and Gramps wants to perpetuate.

[frogcycle]

8. I would like to see

an explanation of why he could not have gone just with his secret service contingent. I'm not saying it could/would have worked; just want to get some facts to refute suggestions by the rw that there was any way in hell it could have worked, given the last-minute groundrules.

Had the campaign been ready for this last-minute curveball, they'd have come up with something. Maybe a video conference, where he could speak to troops; somebody at the hosp could use a portable camera to enable two-way conversation. Whatever. The point is, if he had done SOMETHING as a replacement for the planned visit, it would be more clear to the skeptics that his hands were tied. As it is, pukes like Hannity lead off with "Obama chose to work out instead of visiting the troops" and show a clip of him in jogging clothes.


Edit to add afterthought:
The issue was the use of campaign funds and people to make the visit. Could he have flown to Landstuhl using campaign dollars, driven to the base using campaign staff and dollars, and then just entered the base with just Secret Service? Since the Senate staff had already gone home and the second half of the trip was not a Senate trip, he had no option to fall back to that, which is evidently what the DoD told him he had to do. It seems like there really was no viable option, given the timing. It was more a screwup by his planners in putting the visit on the agenda to begin with than anything else.

[jimshoes]

9. The lame stream media is hoping

they can create something that they can use to take the shine off the Obama trip and use it to pump up Lumpy McSame's flaccid campaign.

[yorgatron]

11. i think Obama becoming president helps those soldiers more than a visit.

how about THAT for an ad?

[Supersedeas]

39. the ole Tom Brokaw scowl is one method of GoP Media attack

[blues90]

12. These are the soldiers who if die are not counted

So yes Obama should gone to see them and planned to see them and made this the point of seeing them. I think it would have had more of an affect than Obamas world tour campaign.

[MonkeyFunk]

13. Yes, they are counted

the idea that people flown out of Iraq before they die aren't counted is just silly.

[Blarch]

15. agreed.

that is just some silly shit.

[blues90]

16. I just can't believe that .

I forget who it was but when pressured they admitted the soldiers who did not die on the ground are not counted . There is no way there are just 4500 soldiers killed .

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. It's probably closer to 10,000

Especially when you add the deaths in Afghanistan.

[MonkeyFunk]

26. So you really believe there are thousands of casualties

that go unlisted, and the families of these soldiers don't say anything?

[proud2BlibKansan]

28. You can easily answer this question yourself

Here is the most popular site for the count: http://icasualties.org/oif/

It only lists deaths in Iraq. 4124. That does not include Afghanistan. Those deaths are listed under a separate tab on that website.

Check other sites. They do the same thing. We are counting the deaths in Iraq and releasing that number to the public but we don't usually include the number from Agfhanistan.

As for the families, I doubt they go searching for their loved one's name on an official list. At least I don't think I would. I have met a few in the peace movement. In fact that is how I first learned that this death count was inaccurate, from a mother whose son died at Walter Reed and wasn't counted. But she said most families would probably never know; they are too overwhelmed with their grief.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[uppityperson]

33. You do realize that is "Iraq Coalition Casualty Count", "I" in the address is for Iraq?

Hence it lists deaths in Iraq. They are nice enough to have a link to another page for Afghanistan, and they (at least used to) have a link to the Coalition Casualties by Location over Time page http://www.obleek.com/iraq/

People who die out of theater (I think it is called) are listed on that page, I have seen them with place of death being Walter Reed. Those who commit suicide after discharge aren't listed though since they aren't active military.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. Actually no it's not silly at all

http://askville.amazon.com/official-death-count-soldiers-Iraq-died-result-happened/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=1081265&search=soldiers%2Bwho%2Bdon%27t%2Bdie%2Bin%2Biraq%2Bnot%2Bcounted

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1669.htm

Casualties whose next-of-kin are not notified or cannot be contacted/located do not therefore appear to be counted in the official tally.

Additionally, an April 27, 2004, story titled "The Lasting Wounds Of War: Roadside Bombs Have Devastated Troops and Doctors Who Treat Them" by Karl Vick and published in the Washington Post, page 1, mentioned instances where US casualties, having suffered extensive brain-damage and with no prospect of regaining consciousness, are sent home for families to decide whether or not to terminate life support . . . It is not immediately apparent the extent to which these casualties are accounted for in the official DoD casualties count.
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/10/us-death-toll-in-iraq-higher-than-you.html

It is incomprehensible that the Democratic leadership, after 30 months of war and occupation in Iraq, has not challenged the Bush administration’s deliberate low-balling of U.S. casualties in Iraq (not to mention refusing even to estimate the Iraqi civilian losses).

The Department of Defense counts as official casualties the fatality toll, but only those injuries incurred in combat operations. This criteria leaves out thousands of serious injuries, thousands of cases of disease (such as sandfly disease) and tens of thousands of disabling post-traumatic-stress disorders.

As demonstrated by a “60 Minutes” program on CBS last December, permanently and seriously disabled soldiers were very upset that they weren’t even counted. Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld should know how this definitional omission, clearly designed to diminish public indignation and polls against this illegal, costly, destructive, false-pretense military invasion and occupation, disrespects those military families.

Three soldiers in a Humvee were traveling toward their mission, tipped over and slid into the Euphrates River. Why wasn’t the soldier, now a quadriplegic, counted by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld in the official toll?

The actual injury numbers are almost three times the official count. Then there are the soldiers with diseases and serious mental damage.

http://thehill.com/letters/victims-families-speak-for-themselves-on-death-penalty-2005-11-10.html

[MonkeyFunk]

21. Your bolded text doesn't contradict anything I said.

Some here believe that if a soldier is severely injured in combat, but they manage to fly him out of the country before he dies, that his death isn't counted. That's just untrue.

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. Prove those deaths are counted

BTW, good luck.

[MonkeyFunk]

24. Don't have to

you're making the absurd claim that they're not.

That somehow, the families of all these soldiers don't care. It's nonsensical.

It's been discussed here repeatedly, and it's been shown again and again that those deaths are counted.


But here's a list of Iraq casualties who died out-of-theater:

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/Outoftheater.aspx

[proud2BlibKansan]

27. I know for a fact they aren't counted

It's easy to find out. Next time you see an article about a soldier dying in a hospital here go to any of the numerous websites that list the soldiers who have been killed. Search for the name. You won't find it. I have even waited a week or two to see if the sites are updated. They aren't. And in case you are wondering, it's easy to find a site that gets its info from the DOD. The majority of them do.

They also don't count the suicides or the ones who initially recover but suffer from complications later that kill them.

[MonkeyFunk]

29. So who are those people in the link I provided?

And no, suicides aren't counted as combat deaths.

[uppityperson]

34. Thanks for giving the Out of Theater casualties link.

I appreciate being able to find it quickly.

[gateley]

14. Hagel - SFRC. Reed - Armed Services Committee.

Sounds like two people who had a RIGHT to visit the base. :grr:

[Inuca]

31. They were not in Germany with BO n/t

[gateley]

32. Oh yeah. I was on a roll. Good point. nt

[Rex]

19. Oh deary dear. Hey Pukes you fucked up again.

Looks like the Pentagon is about to go liberal. GOP bout to do themselves in there too. No wonder they won't hold any conventions. I'm sure they will pray to the big ES&S God in hte sky for positive results next year. :eyes:

[dysfunctional press]

20. to the average voter- YES, he could/should have "caught a cab and gone over there all by himself"

that's how it's going to be spun- he couldn't make it a photo op, so it wasn't worth the trouble for him to go.

just watch.

[annabanana]

22. ok

420 miles.. good.

[dysfunctional press]

25. well- 420 miles didn't seem to matter when he was going WITH his staff.

why couldn't his aides have travelled with him to the town nearest the base, and then obama travels with a military liason/escort(or whatever it would be called) to the the base...?

but yeah- those kinds of logistics are probably much too difficult to figure out...:eyes:

[GeorgeGist]

36. Go by himself ???

That would require him to be brave.