Hannity pummels Obama over dropping military hospital visit

"Well, as John McCain said, it's never inappropriate if you are a United States Senator to visit a sick soldier. It's never inappropriate."
Sean Hannity, July 25, 2008.

Obama's decision to skip a planned trip to visit wounded soldiers at the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany is going to be a big headache this fall for the junior senator from my state.

Sean Hannity ripped into the Cult of Change leader on his radio show this afternoon:

You know I've found one article -- I hadn't known this -- I was telling you earlier the Obama campaign tried to blame the Pentagon. Here he was scheduled. He wanted to go visit this military hospital. It was on the campaign sheet to go visit the military hospital in Germany. And we find out that the only restrictions the Pentagon wanted to impose was their rule against turning visits by politicians into campaign events.

And, by the way, you know, I know for a fact because I talked to these kids when I went to Walter Reed and Bethesda, that literally the president would sneak on over often to go see these, kids -- you never heard about it, it was never reported. As a matter of fact, I remember I was out there with Ollie North and they said, yeah the president was just here, two days ago, whatever it was. And you know, same thing with Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld used to go over there all the time, but he didn't turn it into a campaign event.

Anyway, so Obama has it on the schedule. The Pentagon says, look, you can come but they're going to impose their rule against turning a visit by a politician into a campaign event. Now this is what we finally are finding out here. All the Pentagon said is they advised Obama's staff -- yeah of course he can visit the hospital and injured personnel in Germany but only in his capacity as a member of Congress, in other words without the trappings of a political campaign, which by the way, it's unfair to use sick soldiers who risked their lives as a political prop.

Obama apparently cancelled the visit and went to work out instead. He went to work out and then said it would be inappropriate as part of a trip financed by his campaign. Well, as John McCain said, it's never inappropriate if you are a United States senator to visit a sick soldier. It's never inappropriate. There's not one taxpayer in the country that would have any opposition to this nor is there any rules against this. The only difference is the only restriction that was placed is that they don't want to have candidates, you know, using the appearance for some type of political benefit. That wasn't enough. He had to bring along of course the entourage and the multiple 10,000 media press secretaries along with him.

So if you want my take on this, if you want to remember one thing about this trip is that Barack Obama chose to work out rather than see the wounded troops because he couldn't bring Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, and Brian Williams with him.

Jim Geraghty in the National Review's Campaign Spot has more on Obama's cut-and-run from our recovering soldiers. He calls is a "fumble."

Look for the Sunday morning talk shows to bring up Obama's fumble.

Technorati tags: Obama politics Barack Obama Election Democrats Germany Berlin Deutschland military war on terror McCain John McCain Sean Hannity Cult of Change Bush