For weeks, Mr. Obama had been planning to visit wounded troops in Germany, just as he did in Afghanistan last week and previously had done at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Yet the Landstuhl visit carried more risk because it was to come in the middle of an overseas campaign trip.
Robert Gibbs, a senior strategist for the campaign, said Mr. Obama thought he could carry out the visit without being perceived as politicizing it.
But two days before the visit, Pentagon officials told the campaign that only Mr. Obama would be allowed inside the medical center in his capacity as a senator. The adviser who had intended to join Mr. Obama, Scott Gration, a retired major general in the Air Force, was told he could not go along because he was a volunteer campaign adviser.
Mr. Obama was asked by reporters to explain the matter on Saturday in London.
“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,” Mr. Obama said. “So rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we not make a visit and instead I would call some of the troops that were there.”
NYT: Fact-checking Obama's canceled visit - The New York Times - MSNBC.com
Obama has never identified that he prefers to use his middle name. You have done this several times in this thread, and in others. The only reason to be doing this is to bait others. Please stop doing it.
