Obama "Misleads" on his own famliy history

[autigeremt 6,653]

Fox News

Barack Obama is getting called out again for his knowledge of history, including his own family’s, after declaring to veterans on Memorial Day that his uncle helped liberate the Auschwitz death camp at the end of World War II.

Two problems with the tale: Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army, and Obama’s American mother was an only child.

Speaking in Las Cruces, N.M., on Monday, the Democratic presidential candidate said he did not serve, but comes from a family that did sacrifice for the nation. He was speaking about the many members of the military who suffer post traumatic stress disorder and should be given better care.

“I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps and the story in our family is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months, right. Now obviously something had really affected him deeply but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” he said.

However, a quick check on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site shows that Soviet forces were the first to approach Auschwitz, which was in Poland.

“On Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners,” the site reads.

U.S. forces did liberate several camps, including Ohrdruf Concentration Camp on April 4, 1945; Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp on April 11, 1945; Buchenwald on April 12, 1945; Dachau on April 29, 1945; and Mauthausen on May 5, 1945.

Obama was raised in part by his grandparents, and his father served in the second World War.

A request for clarification has been made to the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee seized on the comments.

“Barack Obama’s dubious claim is inconsistent with world history and demands an explanation. It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true. Obama’s frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief,” said RNC Press Secretary Alex Conant.

[bigsixfive 328]

Let me go ahead and make the comment from the youtube and digg.com crowd: "Its from Fox, so its a right-wing lie."

It will be interesting to see how this is played out in the media, because this is no different than Hillary's tall tales of sniper fire and being named after Sir Edmund Hillary. My guess is this is all we'll hear of it.

[RunInRed 16,438]

As the Republican National Committee seized on the discrepancies, Obama’s campaign clarified that the Illinois senator was actually referring to his “great uncle,” and that he had confused Auschwitz with another concentration camp. The campaign said he meant to refer to Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.

“Senator Obama’s family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II — especially the fact that his great uncle was a part of liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton sad in a statement. “Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically.”

The campaign said his great uncle, Charlie Payne, served in the 89th Infantry Division, and that the unit was among those to liberate Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945.

According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site, Ohrdruf was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops in Germany. The site said the 89th Infantry Division was later recognized as a “liberating unit” by the museum and the Army’s Center of Military History.

The explanation from the Obama camp came after his remarks were put under the microscope by the RNC.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05/27/re...ng-key-details/

[Tigermike 3,041]

I don't think this was an out right lie. I really think he just got a little confused. Family stories can be that way sometimes can't they? In reality it was his great-uncle he had in mind, not his uncle, and the camp wasn’t Auschwitz but one of the ones Patton’s army liberated, namely, the Ohrdruf subcamp at Buchenwald.

What this does is demonstrate once again that Obama the Annointed One, has a gaffe problem, especially when speaking extemporaneously. If he’s going to tell personal anecdotes on the campaign trail, he’d better demonstrate a passable knowledge of the subject matter when he does so. Remember the 57 states? It's a good thing he has an Ivy League education.

The Washington Post isn’t feeling neary as generous or forgiving as me:

Granted, it is getting late in the campaign. The candidates are tired, and prone to making silly mistakes. Many Americans might have problems distinguishing Buchenwald and Ohrdruf from Auschwitz. But should we not expect more from a Harvard-educated presidential candidate? Is it too much to ask that an aspiring commander-in-chief knows (1) that Auschwitz (like many of the other Nazi death camps) is in Poland, and (2) that the eastern advance of the U.S. Army in World War II stopped on the river Elbe? Let me know what you think."

Where in the world is Auschwitz?

Auschwitz, January 1945.

"I had an uncle who was one of the, um, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family is that when he came home he just went up in the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months."

--Barack Obama, Memorial Day speech, Las Cruces, NM.

In an attempt to burnish his credentials with America's veterans, Barack Obama has frequently talked about his grandfather "who served in Patton's army." He has now added a new episode to his World War II repertoire: the uncle who liberated Auschwitz. Unfortunately, the story shows that the presumptive Democratic nominee has a poor grasp of European history and geography.

The Facts

UPDATED TUESDAY 5:30 P.M.

Auschwitz is located in southern Poland, near the city of Krakow. It was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. At the time, U.S. armies were still on the western borders of Germany, a thousand miles away, regrouping after the Battle of the Bulge. The Americans had not even crossed the Rhine at this point.

The Obama campaign now says that Obama was referring to his great-uncle on his mother's side, and the camp in question was not Auschwitz, but Ohrdruf, which was part of the Buchenwald camp system in Lower Saxony. Ohrdruf was the first camp to be liberated by the Americans on April 4, 1945, and it was visited a week later by Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley. Eisenhower later wrote to his wife that he "never dreamed that such cruelty, bestiality and savagery could really exist in this world."

The campaign declined to release the name of Obama's great-uncle, apparently because he is an elderly man who does not want to be disturbed by reporters. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that he served in the 89th Infantry Division which crossed the Rhine river in March 1945.

UPDATE TUESDAY 6 P.M.

The attempt to shield the name of the Obama relative who took part in the liberation of Ohrdruf lasted about an hour. According to the Associated Press, it is Charlie Payne, the brother of Obama's maternal grandmother, Madelyn Lee Payne.

Obama's Auschwitz claim, made during a Memorial Day appearance in New Mexico, was first reported in blog postings by Washington Post reporter Karl Vick and by CBS News. Neither report provided a direct quote, raising the possibility that Obama might have been misquoted. I asked Vick to go back and check his recording of the event.

The above quote is taken from a verbatim transcript. Prior to talking about Auschwitz, Obama mentioned his grandfather (the one in Patton's army), recalling that he did not like talking about the war. This led into a riff on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a term that Obama said was unknown during World War II and the Vietnam War. "People basically had to handle it on their own." He gave the example of his uncle who hid away in the attic after liberating Auschwitz.

Granted, it is getting late in the campaign. The candidates are tired, and prone to making silly mistakes. Many Americans might have problems distinguishing Buchenwald and Ohrdruf from Auschwitz. But should we not expect more from a Harvard-educated presidential candidate? Is it too much to ask that an aspiring commander-in-chief knows (1) that Auschwitz (like many of the other Nazi death camps) is in Poland, and (2) that the eastern advance of the U.S. Army in World War II stopped on the river Elbe? Let me know what you think.

The Pinocchio Test

Before hearing from the Obama campaign, I gave the candidate four Pinocchios for this howler. I am subtracting one Pinocchio in view of the explanation that Obama confused the two concentration camps and that the underlying story was accurate. Three Pinocchios for "significant factual errors."

WAPO FACT CHECKER

Three Pinocchios … ouch. That's fot to hurt.

Maybe Obama should have run things through Joe Biden?

[bigsixfive 328]

I don't think this was an out right lie. I really think he just got a little confused. Family stories can be that way sometimes can't they? In reality it was his great-uncle he had in mind, not his uncle, and the camp wasn’t Auschwitz but one of the ones Patton’s army liberated, namely, the Ohrdruf subcamp at Buchenwald.

I see this one of two ways:

1) Auschwitz is a much more recognizable name than Buchenwald, so he embellished the story to have a greater emotional impact.

2) He doesn't know the facts of which he's speaking, and should have shored them up before he attempted to lay a family claim to a historic event.

Either way, he's trying to take credit for something he didn't do while subtly diverting the focus of the question at hand.

[TexasTiger 12,965]

It's hilarious watching Bush supporters get all exercised over an occasional misstatement.

[Tigermike 3,041]

It's hilarious watching Bush supporters get all exercised over an occasional misstatement.

It's even more hilarious watching Obama supporters take up for him and try to deflect any critisism or acknowledgement of his many gaffes. An occasional misstatement? That is more than a stretch isn't it Tex? Obama supporters and the DNC have not taken McCains statements out of context and ran adds telling their lies have they?

As I have said before, Obama is the whinniest man to ever run for president. But with his record of "mis-speaking", he has plenty to whine about.

[TexasTiger 12,965]

It's hilarious watching Bush supporters get all exercised over an occasional misstatement.

It's even more hilarious watching Obama supporters take up for him and try to deflect any critisism or acknowledgement of his many gaffes. An occasional misstatement? That is more than a stretch isn't it Tex? Obama supporters and the DNC have not taken McCains statements out of context and ran adds telling their lies have they?

As I have said before, Obama is the whinniest man to ever run for president. But with his record of "mis-speaking", he has plenty to whine about.

List them.

[Tigermike 3,041]

It's hilarious watching Bush supporters get all exercised over an occasional misstatement.

It's even more hilarious watching Obama supporters take up for him and try to deflect any critisism or acknowledgement of his many gaffes. An occasional misstatement? That is more than a stretch isn't it Tex? Obama supporters and the DNC have not taken McCains statements out of context and ran adds telling their lies have they?

As I have said before, Obama is the whinniest man to ever run for president. But with his record of "mis-speaking", he has plenty to whine about.

List them.

OK here are a few off the top of my head:

"With the execption of Alaska and Hawaii, I have visited all 57 states."

"My uncle helped liberate the Auschwitz"

"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."

"How's it going, Sunshine? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everybody. It's good to be in Sunshine!"

He opened a speech in Sioux Falls, S.D. by declaring, "Thank you, Sioux City!"

Obama cited Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman

as presidents who met with enemies. Does he know no history? Neither

Roosevelt nor Truman ever met with any of the leaders of the Axis

powers. Obama must be referring to the pictures he's seen of Roosevelt

and Stalin at Yalta, and Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Does he not know

that at that time Stalin was a wartime ally?"

But what about Barack Obama? The guy's a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign:

-- Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." The actual death toll: 12.

-- Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: "Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go."

-- Last week, in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, S.D., audience, Obama exulted: "Thank you, Sioux City. ... I said it wrong. I've been in Iowa for too long. I'm sorry."

-- Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: "Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle." On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?

-- Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement:

"There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born."

Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was "speaking metaphorically about the civil rights movement as a whole."

-- Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: "We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it's harder for us to use them in Afghanistan." The real reason it's "harder for us to use them" in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi or other non-Arabic languages.

-- Over the weekend in Oregon, Obama pleaded ignorance of the decades-old, multi-billion-dollar massive Hanford nuclear waste cleanup:

"Here's something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I'm not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don't know exactly what's going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I'll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport."

I assume on that ride, a staffer reminded him that he's voted on at least one defense authorization bill that addressed the "costs, schedules, and technical issues" dealing with the nation's most contaminated nuclear waste site.

-- Last March, the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama's "Dreams from My Father":

"Then, there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don't exist, say the magazine's own historians."

-- And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn't "pose a serious threat to us" -- cluelessly arguing that "tiny countries" with small defense budgets can't do us harm -- and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, "I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave." Barack Obama -- promoted by the Left and the media as an all-knowing, articulate, transcendent Messiah -- is a walking, talking gaffe machine. How many more passes does he get? How many more can we afford?

link

That may not be all, but one thing is for sure. More are on the way!

[bigsixfive 328]

That may not be all, but one thing is for sure. More are on the way!

How could you forget the comment about poor people clinging to guns, or religion, or antithapy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant, or anti-trade?

[AUTiger1 0]

Just a few more than I can think of:

He overstated the Kennedy's role in helping his father.

He referred to the "President of Canada", Canada has a PM, not a President.

When talking to General Petraeus, he got Iraq and Iran confused and misspoke. I think TM provided a link for that awhile back.

I think what he said about his uncle was a mistake. Like TM said earlier, sometimes family stories get confused easily. I have had to call other relatives plenty of times when tell things about my family to my wife. It's no big deal. Everyone wants to jump on a candidate when they may misspeak about something. Comedians have made a living off of Bush and his gaffe's. If they can't take a little criticism or someone poking fun at them, they don't even need to be in politics. Just like everyone trying to make political hay off of McCain and the 100 years comments and the Sunnis and Shiite gaffe. Sorta like dodging snipers or being named after Sir Edmond Hillary . No difference really. If you are going to make fun of and or get your panties all in a wad about one candidate's gaffe, why not both?

[RunInRed 16,438]

As much as some wish, misstatements will not stop the greatest politician of our lifetime from taking the stage. The countdown is on...

[arnaldoabru 11]

It's hilarious watching Bush supporters get all exercised over an occasional misstatement.

"Fool me once,shame on you, fool me ...uh...fool me... uh..... fool me again....."that's the ticket

W

the idiot

[Tigermike 3,041]

As much as some wish, misstatements will not stop the greatest politician of our lifetime from taking the stage. The countdown is on...

Biden is one of the most knowlegeable active politicians in regards to foreign policy that we have in this country today. To disagree, only shows your own unwillingness to accept the facts.

You are on a roll with grandiose statements. Keep it up!

Joe Biden: "Look Barack there is a Zombie over there."

Obama: "Yes I see him do you think he will vote for me?"

Biden: "Sure it's probably your uncle who helped liberate the Auschwitz death camp!"

Obama: "Wow, Rev. Wright, won't like that."

[bigsixfive 328]

As much as some wish, misstatements will not stop the greatest politician of our lifetime from taking the stage. The countdown is on...

I'm pretty sure Regan passed away a few years back...

[TexasTiger 12,965]

As much as some wish, misstatements will not stop the greatest politician of our lifetime from taking the stage. The countdown is on...

I'm pretty sure Regan passed away a few years back...

Yep, in 2003:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Regan

[AURaptor 1,125]

It's hilarious watching Bush supporters get all exercised over an occasional misstatement.

Obama lied about this, what else will he lie about ?

[TexasTiger 12,965]

It's hilarious watching Bush supporters get all exercised over an occasional misstatement.

Obama lied about this, what else will he lie about ?

For someone who ignores all the deceit that led us a to ill-advised war, to consider this is "lie" just illustrates how hopelessly drunk on the kool-aid you are.

[CircleDrill 178]

You guys really need to quit basing your opinions of people off of sound bytes delivered from your favorite news source and entertainment channel.

Watch the larger context of the speech and you will see that this "misstatement" seems to be simply a slightly improvised deviation from a scripted speech.

I know that is a no-no in todays sound-byte-crazy-blackberry-world, but give me a break. I am not taking up for Obama, I am just pointing out the fact that all of you (including the Obama camp) are totally overreacting to this.

Fox News is trying as hard as they can to catch Obama screwing up, and THIS is the best they can come up with? They are actually making him look BETTER because they are obviously going out of their way to hurt the man. And the Obamalovers are reacting to Fox News by circling the wagons around this guy? All of you look ridiculous.

[autigeremt 6,653]

You guys really need to quit basing your opinions of people off of sound bytes delivered from your favorite news source and entertainment channel.

Watch the larger context of the speech and you will see that this "misstatement" seems to be simply a slightly improvised deviation from a scripted speech.

I know that is a no-no in todays sound-byte-crazy-blackberry-world, but give me a break. I am not taking up for Obama, I am just pointing out the fact that all of you (including the Obama camp) are totally overreacting to this.

Fox News is trying as hard as they can to catch Obama screwing up, and THIS is the best they can come up with? They are actually making him look BETTER because they are obviously going out of their way to hurt the man. And the Obamalovers are reacting to Fox News by circling the wagons around this guy? All of you look ridiculous.

It's not just on Fox! NBDC is by far the worst in the business. Fox is the closest thing to Fair you will find on the dial.

That said, Obama has a history of this. He wants to paint McCain as old, but Obama is the one who acts like the old guy who can't get his stories straight. It's a non-issue at the end of the day, but it paints a collective picture of the guy. McCain has his faults, and Obama is exposing his own as time moves along.

[DKW 86 7,431]

Like I said before, with a teleprompter he is the smartest man in the room. Take away the teleprompter and he loses 30 points in IQ.