Obama lies about snubbing troops in Germany

Barack Obama, as part of his magical mystery tour where he would learn where countries were on the map, was scheduled to meet with wounded soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Barack was treading a fine line on campaign finance with this trip. Part of the trip was a "senatorial fact-finding mission", paid for by we taxpayers. There were campaign-like events on that part of the trip, like Obama's trip to the Wailing Wall complete with campaign banners strung up on the fence. But when he visited military bases, no campaigning was possible -- the pictures were even shot by military photographers, not the campaign or the campaign volunteers in the media.

But halfway through the trip, the congressional visit ended, and his campaign began. The entire Germany visit was part of his campaign, he flew on his campaign plane, and he had his campaign staff, not his senatorial staff.

But he scheduled a visit to the military hospital as part of his senatorial duties -- because you can't campaign there. The rules are easy to understand. However, since Obama had sent his senate staff away, and since apparently he's scared to be alone, he tried to bring one of his campaign advisors, General Scott Gration -- thinking that since he previously served at the base and was retired military that the base would make an exception to the "no campaign staff" rule.

And when the base said sorry, you are welcome, but Gration must stay in the waiting room, Obama decided to cancel the trip rather than risk being alone with the troops.

Now, however, Obama is making things worse, by lying about the entire event. He's actually told several lies, but the last lie is such a blatant one that it can't be ignored. Not that the media won't ignore it -- few reporters bothered to tell us that Obama lied about being on the Banking Committee, for example.

Let's go over all the lies he told just about this one thing, starting from when the press figured out he had cancelled a scheduled visit to the base.

First, his campaign issued the statement that "The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign."

Of course, that raised the question as to why they had ever scheduled it, and why the Senator felt he couldn't visit the troops without making them into political props.

So then the campaign tried to float the lie that the pentagon had changed the rules and raised the issue of a "political visit", and that was why they cancelled: "We learned from the Pentagon last night that the visit would be viewed instead as a campaign event. Sen. Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors perveived as a campaign event when his visit was to show his appreciation for our troops and decided instead not to go."

That didn't go over well, so then the campaign tried to stir up a rumor that it was all John McCain's fault, getting Andrea Mitchell to carry the water for him. But nobody bought that lie.

So now Obama has a new lie. In this lie, he claims the event was never even on the schedule:

"The staff was working this so I don’t know each and every detail but here is what I understand happened," Obama said. "We had scheduled to go, we had no problem at all in leaving, we always leave press and staff off -- that is why we left it off the schedule.

Except if you go back to where this started, you find out it was ON the schedule, until they removed it. As the Washington Post reports:

When Obama arrived in Germany on Thursday, a printed schedule said he would fly to the military hospital Friday. Asked at the time about the schedule, an Obama adviser said it was incorrect, that the stop had been considered but ultimately rejected.

Senior adviser Robert Gibbs said in a statement, "The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign."

Get it? In three short days, we went from an event on the schedule that was removed at the last minute out of a belated respect for the troops, to Obama claiming the event was left off the schedule because it wasn't a political event.

It is clear they made a mistake, just like Obama was wrong about the Surge. And just like the surge, Obama simply cannot admit he makes any errors. When he's not pretending that he said the opposite of what he really said, he stubbornly sticks to wrong-headed decisions, even insisting he refuses to learn from his mistakes or fix them. When Fox news asked Obama if it was a mistake not to take time for the troops, Obama said "No".

Of course, if you saw the picture of the girl he got to work out with instead of seeing the troops....