Obama, the Pentagon and Ross Kaminsky's continuing dishonesty

I see Kaminsky has now engaged me on his blog, claiming that his initial report (parroting a John McCain press release) that Obama bailed on visiting our hospitalized troops is in fact accurate.

Let me repost,

"We informed the Obama staff that he was more than welcome to visit as Senator Obama, with Senate staff. However, he could not conduct the visit with campaign staff," a Pentagon spokesperson tells EC.

I stand by my assertion that Kaminsky's post is factually incorrect.

Kamisnky also misrepresents the AP article he cites in his updated post. He cherry-picks a quotation regarding whether or not Obama's plane was cleared to land - conveniently leaving out the most relevant portions of the article,

The spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said the Air Force several days ago cleared Obama's chartered campaign jet to land at Ramstein Air Base. It was only Wednesday night, two days before the planned visit, that Pentagon officials conveyed their views, he said, and Obama decided not to go.

Gibbs said Obama had decided several weeks ago he wanted to visit wounded troops in Germany. Asked whether either the senator or aides had considered that the trip might be viewed as political, he replied, "We had taken some of that into consideration but we believed that it could be done in a way that would not create, it would not be created or seen as a campaign stop."

But after hearing from the Pentagon, he said, "We decided, Senator Obama decided having made that decision he was far more willing to take the criticism from some political people or political opponents in a political atmosphere than to put our troops in the middle of our campaign back and forth."

The Pentagon made it clear to Senator Obama that his visit would place our troops in the middle of a campaign and he decided to cancel his visit based on the Pentagon's stated concerns.

Not surprisingly Kaminsky distorts the Washington Post article he cites as well which clearly states that the Obama campaign canceled the trip based on Pentagon concerns. Just as the Pentagon stated themselves on Friday and just as the AP confirmed.

Notice too how he tries to portray Andrea Mitchell as somehow a pro-Obama force in the media. Andrea Mitchell is married to longtime libertarian Republican Alan Greenspan. Besides her personal politics nothing in her professional history indicates she is in anyway pro-Obama, just the opposite actually.

This is of course a classic "heads I win, tales you lose" scenario for the Obama campaign. McCain and Kamisnky would have blasted Obama if he had visited for using the troops in a political campaign. No action that Senator Obama could have taken would satisfy McCain or Kaminsky because everything is game for political posturing and grandstanding.