C-in-C Preview (UPDATE: Transcript)

Ed Morrissey points out something I should have noticed, having been in the USAF and having been stationed in Berlin before the Wall-fall: why is Obama even in Berlin when there are no American troops there anymore?

And why is he making a speech before the Germans while skipping a visit to the DOD's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in southern Germany, to which severely injured US military personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan are evacuated, then stabilized before coming home?

Answer: because talking to his peeps (the Europeans) is of the utmost importance. If he had any advocates in the military, there are probably fewer now.

(Thanks to Bob Owens)

UPDATE: Speech just ended. I have a few comments about it but I'll wait for a transcript.

UPDATE: The transcript is at the campaign site. Also at Drudge.

I thought about nit-picking the speech to death--and there are several places in the very first part of the speech which are easy targets--but changed my mind because, in this case, it doesn't matter what the wannabe King of the World said but where he said it and where he won't be going before his trip to Paris and his return to America.

UPDATE: Read:

Did I miss the part about how he was going to withdrawal all the troops from Germany in 16 months ?

Of course, he didn't say this but, likely, only because neither he nor his advisers thought of it.

UPDATE: The Landstuhl Visit That Wasn't

Comments

[Karmi]

Whilst waiting for your update, here's one quote that I thought that Obama didn't need to bring up: "I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city."

[baldilocks]

Yep. He didn't leave the race card at home, apparently.

[Tully]

I just about choked when I hit the part about Beijing factories bringing drought to Kansas. Someone needs to check weather records. I spent a good part of late spring and early summer pumping out my back yard and being happy I lived on a hill.

[Karmi]

'W' didn't put the Troops in Germany, so it's OK for them to be there. ;-)))

[me]

Actually Baldi it has just been reported that the Pentagon canceled Obama plans to appear at the base in Germany and there is strong speculation that McCain used his connection in the Pentagon to make that happen.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2008/07/25/mitchell-scuttlebutt-says-mccain-sabotaged-obama-military-hospital

This is already on top of the memo Condi Rice sent to American embassy's commanding foreign service not to give aid to Obama, a US Senator, as he travels abroad. Then there was a subsequent Condi memo, discovered 48 hours ago, forbidding US foreign service workers from attending the Berlin speech.

If this behavior happened by officials in another government we would call it by its proper name: authoritarianism and cronyism.

[Tully]

LMAO. I don't think that "the military is being mean to me" line is gonna convert any undecided voters over to Obama. Quite the opposite.

[notropis]

"it has just been reported that the Pentagon canceled Obama plans"

If "me" read "me" 's own story, "me" would notice that it doesn't say that the Pentagon canceled the plans. In fact, when Obama found out he couldn't go tromping in there with his campaign staff, his people canceled it.

But, anyway. As to the speech:

It reminded me in one crucial respect of Jeremiah Wright's sermons. A real prophet directs his condemnation to the sins of his listeners, not the sins of others. Obama stood in front of a foreign audience, decrying America's failings, just as Rev. Wright stands in front of his black congregation decrying the sins of whites.

That's not courage; that's not honesty; that's not speaking truth to power; and that's certainly not the example we find in the Bible.