According to The New York Times, it was two weeks ago that the Pentagon gave Barack Obama the green light to land in Ramstein, Germany, this morning, where he was to visit wounded American soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. For all intents and purposes, the Pentagon red-lighted the plan late on Wednesday, citing a Department of Defense regulation that prohibits a candidate for office from being accompanied by campaign staff when visiting a military base. Senate staff would have been OK, in Obama's case. But, as it turns out, campaign staff is all he had in tow.
Presumably, as part of the original approvals process, the Pentagon would have required that Obama tell them whom he planned to have accompany him to Landstuhl -- i.e., campaign staff.
If -- as Pentagon spokesperson Elizabeth Hibner told Talking Points Memo reporter Greg Sargent today -- it is "longstanding Department of Defense policy" that a candidate be prohibited from taking campaign staff along for the ride when visiting a military base...
Why did the Pentagon approve that part of the itinerary in the first place?
And why did the Pentagon wait until very late on Wednesday to disapprove it -- i.e., only after Obama had told the press, and thus the country, that he was going to visit the troops?
Was the Pentagon trying to embarrass Obama?
This all sounds very fishy.
A statement from Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell says, in part, that
it is not permitted to bring with [Obama] campaign staff. His team was notified of that, and they made a decision not to visit the hospital.
But exactly when was Obama's team "notified of that"? On this point, the Pentagon is conspicuously silent.
Surely, one assumes, the Pentagon would have to have notified Obama of its visitation policy well in advance of the original approval two weeks ago -- since only Senate staffers were allowed, and since, presumably, whichever Senate staffer(s) Obama wanted to bring with him to Landstuhl would have to have been part of the approval.
But according to a statement released last night by Obama adviser and retired Air Force Gen. Scott Gration, who is traveling with Obama this week:
We learned from the Pentagon last night that the visit would be viewed instead as a campaign event.
It's all in the timing. If the Pentagon didn't advise Obama of its policy until late Wednesday -- when it was too late for Obama to fly in Senate staff from Washington, much less to have that staff approved by the Department of Defense -- the Pentagon is playing games, knowing full well that no sitting U.S. Senator -- much less the presumptive Democratic nominee -- is going to make a visit like that "naked," i.e., without being accompanied by at least one of his or her own staff.
Who's supposed to take notes? Obama?
According to Politico reporter Carrie Budoff Brown, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said no, when asked whether he believed the Pentagon had set up the campaign.
But when asked why he thought the Pentagon would clear the Landstuhl visit, only to raise question about it at the eleventh hour, Gibbs was far more circumspect, saying:
I don't know what to make of it.
That speaks volumes, does it not?
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No doubt the money is all exploited from billions of unsuspecti
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Some have suggested that the scuttling of Obama's visit to Landstuhl is Obama's fault. On a HistoryCha
"Are you saying that as a sitting Senator, and someone who has been on the presidenti
Of COURSE, Obama and his campaign know the Pentagon's rules. That's not the point. The point is that, two weeks ago, THE PENTAGON APPROVED OBAMA'S ORIGINAL PLAN --- a plan which had him visiting Landstuhl with retired Air Force General Scott Gration.
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As it happens, Gration is not a campaign staffer per se; he is an unpaid military adviser to the campaign. But does anyone seriously believe that the Pentagon did not --- both as a matter of due diligence and as a preconditi
Certainly, one can see how the Pentagon might have felt that Gration's accompanyi
Absent any evidence to the contrary, what appears to have happened is that the Pentagon initially signed off on Gration --- in effect, waiving its own policy --- and that it reversed itself only when someone decided that pressing the broadest possible reading of the policy could do the most possible damage to Obama.
Someone decided that. The question is: Who?
History Channel thread at http://boa
Gration endorsemen
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However, the Bush Administra
THE LOGAN ACT
The Logan Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 953, states: Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspond