McCain Breaks Obama Travel Embargo, and political odds and ends
18 July 2008 2:21 pm by Taylor Marsh
BY TAYLOR MARSH
John McCain has been caught in some monumental carelessness. Reuters has now done a follow up, so TMP Wire is the easiest source for the original McCain quote:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.
The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator’s trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials’ visits to Iraq in advance.
“I believe that either today or tomorrow — and I’m not privy to his schedule — Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators” who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon…
As TPM quotes an insider with the bottom line:
If it is true that Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, it is a very serious mistake for McCain to have disclosed it publically. Even for run-of-the-mill CODELs the military gives guidance like, “Please strongly discourage Congressional offices from issuing press releases prior to their trips which mention their intent to travel to the AOR and/or the dates of that travel or their scheduled meetings. Such releases are a serious compromise to OPSEC.” If Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, I can not begin to imagine how much this is complicating the security planning for the trip.
Reuters’s other version of the TPM Wire story is up, with McCain’s team backtracking as fast as they can.
McCain’s campaign spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan insisted to reporters later: “He doesn’t know when he’s going. He’s not privy to that information. He was speaking in broader terms, about when Obama does land in Iraq.”
Seems all that vaunted experience of John McCain’s plum slipped his mind.
Gore’s site, We Can Solve It, has more on Gore’s answers to our energy challenge.
Berlin gears up for Obama (via Memeorandum, a great place for the day’s blogging buzz).
Consider this an open thread. Oh, and to add, jazz will be at 8:00 p.m. eastern – 5:00 p.m. pacific, instead of 7:00 p.m., as first announced in the comments. Cocktail and jazz hour is up tonight on suggestion of reader ZMulls, but also because it’s a great idea.
