This is AWFUL. Obama wanted to visit injured troops at Ramstein, but Pentagon prevented him.

[beachmom]

This is where politics goes out the door. From everything I have read and heard, it's just nice when VIPs show up to see the troops -- whether they're super famous, relatively obscure, or even a politician who had just botched a joke -- it's a break in routine and a nice surprise. So what the Pentagon did to the injured troops at Ramstein is beyond despicable:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/25/8227/32024/605/556729

This per Andrea Mitchell:

The background on the military flap is that they had clearly planned a trip to Ramstein . They were planning to visit the injured troops. And then the Pentagon explained that they couldn't go as part of a political trip. The Obama campaign thought that they could go, leave the press corps on the tarmac, and then take off with military escort and make this one last visit. As he did in Iraq, by the way. He visited a casualty unit in the Green Zone, without photographers, as part of the congressional delegation. But the military said that the rules are that he could only go as part of a previously-arranged congressional delegation, to Ramstein

Clearly, people in the campaign are really angry. They had wanted this to be the final stop on the trip here in Germany, and to do it without the press corps, just to do it on his own. But the objections of the military are that he is now being staffed by campaign aides, not by his Senate staff, who are the people of course with him when he went with Hagel and Jack Reed in Iraq. So, you know, the anger here in the campaign is pretty intense at the Pentagon. They feel that the military are drawing some lines--they're not saying this publicly of course--but drawing lines that they might have drawn for other people. He was planning to just go by himself, not with cameras, not with any entourage, as he had done in Walter Reed in the past in Washington, as he did in Iraq. Joe

I mean, what the hell? Dirty tricks against Obama with injured troops in the cross hairs? This is really low, even for the Bush administration. And now the Right Wing is attacking him with a bunch of lies. It's like the "Lonely Kerry" smear all over again. I am so sick of these jerks.