McCain Dirty Ad Blowback!
John McCain has a new TV ad out in three swing states blasting Barack Obama for not visiting wounded soldiers while in Germany.
But the spot is drawing incoming fire from both sides of the aisle.
“Barack Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan,” the announcer says. “He hadn’t been to Iraq in years. He voted against funding our troops. And now, he made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.
“John McCain is always there for our troops,” the narrator concludes. “McCain. Country first.”
Senators Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, both visited the troops with Obama in Afghanistan and Iraq, and both defended him.
“I was with Senator Obama last week as we met privately with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Reed said in a statement issued by the Obama campaign. “Senator Obama listened to their concerns and expressed his gratitude for their service without press or fanfare. He cares for our troops deeply and has worked hard to give them not only the resources they need, but also honor their service with a clearly defined mission and by providing them with the support they have earned when they come home. And just as Senator McCain’s support of President Bush’s veto of funding for our troops doesn’t mean he does not support them, neither does Senator Obama’s insistence that we not give George Bush a blank check.”
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Hagel agreed with Obama that since his campaign was funding his visit to Germany “it would have been inappropriate for him and certainly he would have been criticized by the McCain people and the press” for him to visit the military hospital, saying he would have been “accused of using our wounded men and women as props for his campaign.”
Hagel added that he was also troubled by McCain’s remarks that Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a campaign.”
“I think John is treading on some very thin ground here when he impugns motives and when we start to get into, ‘You’re less patriotic than me. I’m more patriotic,’ ” Hagel said.
The McCain campaign is not letting up, however.