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Character Attack Ad On Obama Loaded With Spin

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Jul 31, 2008 9:54 pm US/Mountain

Character Attack Ad On Obama Loaded With Spin

Reporting
Raj Chohan
DENVER (CBS4) ―

The recent ad by Republican John McCain attacking Democrat Barack Obama during the Illinois senator's overseas tour makes a hard run at Obama's character.

AD: Barack Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan.

 The claim is true. Obama chairs a Senate subcommittee which oversees the NATO effort in Afghanistan, and he has not held a single hearing on the matter. But it's not the whole story. The appropriate committee for hearings on the war is the Senate Armed Services Committee, not Obama's subcommittee. There were six full-committee meetings that focused on Afghanistan during the last two years. Obama missed five meetings but McCain missed them all. The Arizona senator's campaign says he did make two on-the-ground visits to Afghanistan during that same period of time.

AD: He hadn't been to Iraq in years.

 This claim is also true. Before his whirl-wind tour, Barack Obama hadn't been to Iraq since 2006. That's more than 900 days between visits.

AD: He voted against funding our troops

 Again, the claim is true. In may of 2007, Obama voted against a war funding measure that passed overwhelmingly with strong bi-partisan support. It was the first time he had voted against such a bill. On ten other occasions, Obama had consistently voted in favor of funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Obama said he opposed the 2007 bill for its lack of timetables for pulling troops out of Iraq.

AD: 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.

 This claim is misleading. The ad implies Obama skipped his scheduled visit with wounded U.S. troops in Germany either because he wanted to play basketball, or because reporters weren't allowed to accompany the candidate. Here's the spin. Obama knew weeks ahead of time when his campaign arranged the visit to the military hospital at Landstuhl that he could not bring media. His campaign said the last-minute cancellation stemmed from concerns that visiting wounded troops during an overtly political part of his tour might appear that he was trying to exploit them for campaign purposes. While the Pentagon said Obama was welcome to visit, officials did express concern about the potential for politicizing the event. In fact, Obama met with troops earlier in his travels, during the official fact-finding portion of his trip to Iraq, with senators Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel. He had also visited troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in late June.

Bottom line. While several claims in this ad are true, the character attack that Obama snubbed the troops to play basketball is loaded with spin and unsupported by the facts.

. While several claims in this ad are true, the character attack that Obama snubbed the troops to play basketball is loaded with spin and unsupported by the facts.

(© MMIX CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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