They fear Barack the walking gaffe machine.

I know, I know, it was a rhetorical question.

there was too much of a risk of some kind of uncomfortable confrontation with a soldier.

Obama should be ashamed of himself. However it comes as no surprise. I have a friend who’s husband is in Afghanistan and he emailed her about Obama’s visit. He got off the plane got directly into a bullet proof vehicle where he was taken to meet with the Major General. When he got out of the vehicle soldiers where lined up to shake his hand and he blew them off. After the meeting the vehicles took him to the “ClamShell” where he had his big basketball photo shoot. After the big photo shoot he again blew off the opportunity to talk to soldiers and to thank them for their service.
I don’t know about anyone else but I for one do not want this man as Commander and Chief of my country.

and does not reflect in any way Barack Obama, his campaign, or his priorities.

Captain Ed was on this one, as well.

This makes the decision track very clear. Obama and his team set up the visits to military installations before going overseas. After seeing how the media got excluded in Iraq and Afghanistan, they decided it wasn’t worth traveling to Ramstein and Landstuhl to visit the severely wounded troops because they couldn’t bring the campaign and get the photo ops they wanted. Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin

Barry and Hillary care for the military only as a useful political tool.

Good campaign photo opportunity this is. Obama;

• Does not support our mission

• Spends the entire primary dismissing General Petreaus and our commanders (continues to take money from the General BETRAY US crowd)

• Demurs on the historic job these guys have done

• Voted against funding the troops

What a despicable attempt at political campaigning this was, using heroes he doesn’t support as backdrop. This is the odious man people will vote for? Obama is the worst of all liberal Marxist panjandrums.

Want to support the heroes at Landstuhl? Try here or here.

Let the spin begin. I just heard Andrea Mitchell reporting that Obama “hoped to go to Ramstein, Germany and visit US troops here before he left the country. But the Pentagon said he could not do that while on the political leg of this trip, even though Obama had visited injured troops earlier this week in Iraq when he was travelling with the Congressional delegation.”

Blame it on the Pentagon, imagine that.

Barack Obama’s fact-finding mission to the Middle East and Europe has devolved into a presumptuous victory parade. It reminds me of President Bush’s landing on the aircraft carrier, complete with the banner with the now-famous statement.

The Obama campaign’s distribution of campaign material and posting banners with the O logo on foreign soil causes me to see him as equally presumptuous. Has Obama been crowned yet? Did I miss something?

I just hope the average American has the same reaction.

In his speech in Berlin, Obama said that he came “not as a political candidate….”

Then when he turned down a chance to visit wounded troops in Landstuhl he said it wouldn’t be appropriate to do so as a candidate in a campaign.

Can someone with video editing experience please make a YouTube commercial of Obama back before the vote on the surge railing against it, voting against, with footage from his trip to Iraq saying the surge worked but that he still wouldn’t have supported it? With clips of him badgering Katie Couric and Jake Tapper for trying to get an honest answer?

Between all those interviews, his flip flops, his Landstuhl excuse, running against Obama is like trying to box with a ghost. You can’t swing a punch because you never know where the opponent is or will be.

He said he has too much respect for the troops to visit them. Huh? He said he doesn’t want it perceived as a photo op. Huh? There won’t be any press except a military photographer, and I bet he could ask that any pictures not be made public.