[merged] Obama's Memorial Day Gaffes

Brainster

Penultimate Amazing
Brainster
Joined
May 26, 2006
Messages
21,960
In talking about the military service of his family:

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic.
Click to expand...

Of course, no American brigade helped to liberate Auschwitz; in fact the Americans never got as far as Auschwitz, which is in Poland. The 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.

And Obama got the meaning of Memorial Day wrong:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.
Click to expand...

I hope he didn't see any of our fallen heroes in the crowd. Of course Memorial Day is when we remember deceased veterans.

Of the two gaffes, I actually consider the first one more serious, because Obama used it (as politicians use many anecdotes) to justify his support for a particular position (mental health sceening for veterans when they are discharged).

Will the mainstream media (which reported Obama's Auschwitz remark uncritically) dig into the "uncle in the attic"? I'm not holding my breath.
 
Brainster said:
In talking about the military service of his family:

Of course, no American brigade helped to liberate Auschwitz; in fact the Americans never got as far as Auschwitz, which is in Poland. The 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.
Click to expand...

Is there a quote somewhere where Obama actually says Auschwitz? Looking at the linked article, I can't tell. This could be an error on the part of the journalist.
 
What Barack Obama and I Did on Memorial Day

Here's what I did:

I went to Arlington National Cemetery, a bit of a trial, because of the Rolling Thunder event, which closed off a lot of roads near the cemetery and made for pretty heavy traffic. I went to the Columbariums and visited my dad, put a rose from our garden at his marker, and spoke with a few other people who were there to visit their veterans. Someone - probably one of my sister's kids, who all go to college here in the DC area - had placed a stone on top of his marker, a Jewish tradition (see the last scene in Schindler's List), and I noticed that there was a stone on top of the marker of the uncle of a lady I was speaking with. His marker had a cross on it. "Your uncle wasn't Jewish, was he?" "No, but we thought it was a lovely tradition, so we've been doing it, too." She came from a family with a lot more vets in it than I did, and she was going to have a busy day ahead of her. We talked briefly, and thanked each other for the service and sacrifices our vets had made.

Here's what Barack Obama did:
LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Despite not having served in the military himself, Barack Obama used his Memorial Day remarks to speak about his family’s service. “My grandfather marched in Patton’s army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you,” he told a small group of veterans here. “My grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line, but I cannot know what it is for a family to sacrifice like so many of yours have.”

(...snip...)

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz...
Click to expand...
Obama's uncle helped liberate Auschwitz? I got ten thousand bucks that say he didn't.
 
Pookster said:
Is there a quote somewhere where Obama actually says Auschwitz? Looking at the linked article, I can't tell. This could be an error on the part of the journalist.
Click to expand...

The Auschwitz mention is not in his prepared remarks. However, Obama has talked about Auschwitz before, although the details were different:

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.
Click to expand...

Treblinka doesn't help Obama's case any; it was also in Poland and had been plowed under and turned into a farm before the end of the war.
 
Brainster said:
The Auschwitz mention is not in his prepared remarks. However, Obama has talked about Auschwitz before, although the details were different:
Click to expand...
It's not in the video of the speech either.


Brainster said:
Treblinka doesn't help Obama's case any; it was also in Poland and had been plowed under and turned into a farm before the end of the war.
Click to expand...
This was in 2002. There's no mention of an uncle. His grandfather "heard stories" from fellow soldiers. How does this relate to "Obama's Memorial Day Gaffes" again?
 
Brainster said:
And Obama got the meaning of Memorial Day wrong:
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but what did he get wrong about the meaning of Memorial Day? Memorial Day is in honor of our fallen heroes.


Brainster said:
Will the mainstream media (which reported Obama's Auschwitz remark uncritically) dig into the "uncle in the attic"? I'm not holding my breath.
Click to expand...
Nor should you because Obama never made the remark. It's like asking if the mainstream media will dig into Bush's claim that "pigs fly over the White House all the time."

There's no reason to because Bush never said anything of the sort.
 
This was the original 'prepared' comments:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, our sense of patriotism is particularly strong
Click to expand...

He clearly added in the 'I see many of them in the audience today' as a quick improv to mean the heroes he sees at the time of the speech as opposed to the time of its writing.
Who knows, perhaps he was trying to up his religous credentials and imply he saw the dead in the eyes of the crowd. Very unlikely, but in the probable case he fluffed up a momentary improvisation that was intended to recognise those in the audience, is this the best you can really do?

Obama voters could go on about McCain failing to recognise his own words about the conflict in Somalia, but I don't think they are as desperate as the other side.
 
Something is not jibing here.

The speech on his website is "as prepared." It looks like it's roughly 1300 words. If he spoke at about 100 words per minute, it should have taken him less than a quarter-hour to deliver, yet the Washington Post says he spoke "for most of an hour." And the prepared speech does not include the line about seeing deceased vets in the audience, so it's clear he ad-libbed from the prepared text. WaPo says he
...edged into his critique of military and veterans affairs under the Bush administration. Along the way, he endorsed legislation that he said would give veterans the same benefits his grandfather's generation enjoyed under the GI Bill.
Click to expand...
I don't see anything like that in the prepared text.

I can't get youtube at work; is there any mention of an uncle in the speech? Or did both CBS News and the Washington Post have the same hallucination?

Very odd.
 
I think they should go with the angle that maybe his Uncle was Commie and therefore did help liberate Auschwitz.

That has so much more fun attached to it then his actual error...if it turns out he said it. :D
 
Billdave2 said:
I would say the fact that two different reporters( CbS and Washinton Post) mentioned the same thing that it would be most coincidental if it was a mistake.
Click to expand...
If you read carefully you will see that neither source reported this. What they did do is sloppily conflate prior statements that Obama made.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom