From Margaret Talev, traveling with Sen. Barack Obama's campaign:
Obama had canceled a visit to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a military hospital in Germany, and the Ramstein Air Base, and General Jonathan Scott Gration, Director, Strategy, Policy, and Assessments, United States European Command, Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany, issued this statement: "Senator Obama had hoped to and had every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country.
We learned from the Pentagon last night that the visit would be viewed instead as a campaign event. Senator Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors percieved as a campaign event when his visit was to show his appreciation for our troops and decided instead not to go.”
Robert Gibbs, Obama's spokesman, added: "During his trip...to Afghanistan and Iraq, Senator Obama visited the combat support hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad and had a number of other visits with the troops. For the second part of his trip, the senator wanted to visit the men and women at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to express his gratitude for their service and sacrifice.
"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."
The report came as Obama prepared to speak to thousands at a high-profile address in Berlin.
If you look at a map of Germany, Landstuhl is in the lower Southwest corner of the country, while Berlin is in the Northeast. They are hundreds of miles apart.
The plan was originally that the campaign plane--in which Obama was now traveling after the official mideast CODEL portion of the trip ended-- was to land at Ramstein airbase on the way to Berlin to visit the trrops in the nearby hospital and had actually been given clearance to do so.
Apparently the day before this was to happen, the camaign was told that the Pentagon now objected to the visit as planned weeks earlier claiming that the campaign staff and plane could not be accommodated at Ramstein after all, since it would be deemed a political rather than an official visit in violation of DOD regs.
At that point, the senate staff and the official plane had all gone back to the US--they are after all Gov't employees subject to the Hatch Act. They are completely separate from the political staff. Obama's campaign therefore had no choice but to call off the visit.
The suggestion that Obama, during his visit to Berlin could have or should have hopped a taxi outside his hotel and traveled across the entire country by himself to visit the hospital is ludicrous. It simply reflects ignorance of the simple facts of geography.
Posted by: retired-jag | July 27, 2008 at 12:07 AM
It was his right decision to canceled the visit to landstuhl regional medical Center a military hospital in Germany Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors perceived and decision was not to go.
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Posted by: bush will | July 28, 2008 at 07:06 AM