SUMMARY: McCain is claiming that Obama canceled a visit to US troops in Germany because the hospital wouldn't allow cameras inside. In truth, Obama canceled the trip at the request of the Pentagon, and there were never any plans to film the event to begin with.
~~~
A lot has been made of Obama's recent trip to Germany, and his cancellation of a visit to US troops there. Here is McCain's take on it, in the form of (yet another) attack ad. This one is actually a modification of an earlier ad he released.
Announcer: Barack Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan. He hadn't been to Iraq in years. He voted against funding our troops.
And now, he made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras.
John McCain is always there for our troops. McCain. Country first.
John McCain: I'm John McCain and I approve this message.
The bolded piece was added to the earlier ad in lieu of reports that Obama canceled a planned visit to wounded US soldiers at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
The Washington Post has devoted three pages (!) to dispelling the McCain campaign's myth. It's a pretty well-written, thorough article, so rather than summarizing it, I'll just offer a few choice quotations:
The essence of McCain's allegation is that Obama planned to take a media entourage, including television cameras, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany during his week-long foreign trip, and that he canceled the visit when he learned he could not do so. "I know that, according to reports, that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers," McCain said Monday night on CNN's "Larry King Live."
The Obama campaign has denied that was the reason he called off the visit. In fact, there is no evidence that he planned to take anyone to the American hospital other than a military adviser, whose status as a campaign staff member sparked last-minute concern among Pentagon officials that the visit would be an improper political event.
...
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said again yesterday that the Republican's version of events is correct, and that Obama canceled the visit because he was not allowed to take reporters and cameras into the hospital.
"It is safe to say that, according to press reports, Barack Obama avoided, skipped, canceled the visit because of those reasons," he said. "We're not making a leap here."
Asked repeatedly for the "reports," Bounds provided three examples, none of which alleged that Obama had wanted to take members of the media to the hospital.
...
"We got notice that [Gration, the military adviser and only other person whom Obama had intended to travel with to the hospital] would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy but he wasn't on the Senate staff," Obama said. "That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not, or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns."
I think it's pretty clear what happened here. Obama canceled a trip to visit troops out of concern that it would be viewed as insincere and strictly-political, and McCain then claimed that Obama's failure to do so was a sign of how little he cares about the troops. That is the most ridiculous part of this - the insinuation behind it.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Obama didn't care about our troops. Let's say he doesn't a lick of empathy for them. If that's the case (and that is what McCain is insinuating), then this must have been the rundown of events.
1. Obama thinks to himself, "I don't care about US troops."
2. Obama then visits US troops at Walter Reed Medical Center on June 28th, not allowing any cameras inside (despite the fact that he doesn't care about them).
3. He then plans to visit more wounded troops at a hospital in Germany.
4. Obama suddenly realizes that he never cared about the troops to begin with, and cancels his visit.
This is the narrative that McCain is implying, and it just doesn't make any sense. It's completely illogical. Furthermore, as has already been pointed out, even if Obama didn't care about the troops, don't you think he'd go out of his way to visit them anyway? That's what candidates do; it's standard operating procedure for a campaign. A candidate has to at least seem like they care, so they visit veterans and senior citizens and factories and all of that stuff. To try and take these sort of things as an indication of a candidate's feelings (or, worse, their policies) is absurd, and McCain knows this.
A more honest way to gauge who cares more about the troops would be the examine the respective Senators' voting records. As you may remember, Obama voted to pass the recent GI bill, which would give more benefits to veterans, while McCain declined to vote.
Here's the cherry on top: When the announcer in the ad says "And now, he made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops," the ad cuts to a video clip of Obama shooting a three-pointer, implying that he was playing basketball instead of visiting the troops.
The problem? The clip they used was of Obama playing basketball at a military base. The people cheering in the background? Yup, those are US troops.