Barack Obama gave a speech in Berlin, Germany yesterday but one of his other scheduled events, visiting the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases, was cancelled after being told that his staff, media and photographers could not attend.
It was announced yesterday that the Obama campaign had cancelled a scheduled visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases, in Germany, to visit U.S. Troops and wounded military members at the hospital.
The initial reason given by the Barack Obama campaign for the cancellation of the event, via spokesman Robert Gibbs, was
"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."
Today the Obama campaign
claimed that they were told by the Pentagon that there trip to those bases would be viewed as political and they should not go there.
The Department of Defense, via their Chief Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell,
confirms the DoD did communicate with the Obama campaign but they did not tell him the visit was too political, they told him that his security and secret service could attend the event with him but that his entourage of campaign staffers, photographers and media would not be allowed to attend because that would make it too political.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell confirmed to Politico that Department of Defense officials cautioned Barack Obama's campaign that his planned visit to wounded American troops in Germany could not be political in nature and that he would be barred from bringing along campaign staff and reporters. He also said that Cindy McCain recently requested to visit sailors aboard the U.S.N.S. Comfort and was denied.
"Sen. Obama is welcome to visit Landstuhl or any military hospital in his official capacity as a United States senator," Morrell said in a brief interview. "But there is a DOD policy which governs campaigning and electioneering at military facilities that would have to be respected if he were to visit. That distinction was relayed and made clear to campaign, and they made a decision on their own based on that guidance."
In another interview Morrell gives a little more detail as to what the Obama campaign was told, saying,
"We made it clear to him that campaign staff and press would not be permitted to accompany him. We relayed those ground rules. They made a choice based upon the information we relayed to them. It was their choice. We had nothing to do with it."
According to the Obama spokesman Gibbs, they claim that they
believed,
"that based on the information we received that any presence, even his own and only his own, would get into a back and forth on whether his own presence was a campaign event."
Critics are suggesting that the Obama campaign made a deliberate decision to skip visiting the troops because he could not have the media and photographers in attendance for the
photo ops and
political mileage.
Another Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman,
confirms the DoD statement, by stating,
"As a sitting United States senator, Obama obviously has an official interest in the well being of our service members and how the wounded are being treated. He is welcome to visit a military medical center any time that he wants to. As you all know, we do have certain policy guidelines for political campaigns and elections and what is appropriate and what's not appropriate in those situations.
The Pentagon did not tell the senator that he could not visit Landstuhl."
He goes on to conclude that if a person is a sitting Senator and a political candidate, they need to visit a military installation in their Senatorial capacity and not as a presidential candidate.
Was this a misunderstanding between the Obama campaign and the Pentagon on military rules or was this a case of no media, no photos, no visit to the U.S. Military members?
