and the lie is perpetuated...
What lie?? He was planning to go visit, the Pentagon told him they didn't want all the press to show up, so he cancelled the trip. I don't care what his people say is the reason he should have gone to see them and left the reporters in their hotel. Why couldn't he do that? The lame excuse of not wanting to go because the trip was funded by his campaign is a load of crap. Them saying the military told them not to go is a load of crap. So tell me MT what is the real reason he didn't go visit those troops because nothing him or his people have said makes any sense at all.
As reported by ABC News
Whitman said Obama is "certainly welcome to visit a military medical facility any time he wants to," as long as that visit was consistent with that of a sitting senator.
He added, "We do have certain policy guidelines for political campaigns and elections and what's appropriate and not appropriate in those situations. But, the Pentagon, to use your words, certainly did not tell the senator that he could not visit Landstuhl."
The spokesman said that because Obama is both a sitting senator and a political candidate, any visit to Landstuhl would have had to be undertaken within the restrictions that apply to both.
"When you are doing things like a visit to Landstuhl you need to do it in your sitting capacity or you have to do it within the restrictions that apply to any other candidate that might be running for office that is not a sitting senator. So you have to be able to draw those distinctions. Generally speaking the military tries very hard not to get involved in political campaigns."
According to Whitman, Senate staffers could have accompanied Obama, but not campaign staffers. "It would be appropriate to do that with your Senate staff and obviously not with your campaign staff." He added that it would be easy to differentiate the two, "either you work for the senator's staff or you work on the campaign staff, it's very different."
Any discussion of cameras or photographers accompanying Obama was "off the table," said Whitman, who stressed that because of privacy issues, no photography is allowed at Landstuhl.
Whitman noted that during his visit to Iraq, Obama visited a military medical facility, but did so under the auspices of his participation in a congressional delegation, a CODEL.
"There's a distinction that he was part of a CODEL for his visit to Iraq and Afghanistan, then he terminated his participation in the CODEL and then went off to do other things," said Whitman.
So on his trip he used his staus as a sitting Senator to get into medical facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where by the way there penty of cameras to see him do it, but in Germany were they have a strict no camera policy he ducked out. Hmmmm used his campaign financed trip as a CODEL when it suited him.
