Why can’t Team Obama answer this most simple of questions? From ABC News:
The campaign would not answer if Obama was denied outright from visiting the base.
The Pentagon is calling them out on it:
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman denied they tried to discourage Obama’s visit and denied the Pentagon rebuked the campaign about the appropriateness of the planned visit.
“We learned a few days ago of the interest in Sen. Obama going to Landsthul and all we did was simply remind people just to remember our longstanding guidance with respect to policital campaigns in an election year,” Whitman said, “And remind them that Sen. Obama is a sitting senator or has an interest and is welcome to visit an installation, to include something like Landstuhl, but his visit would need to be done consistent with a visit as a sitting senator.”
However Whitman noted that officials at Landstuhl were aware of DOD’s long-standing guidelines to distinguish between the visit of a sitting senator and a visit under the auspices of a political campaign.
And as Jim Geraghty pointed out this morning, General Gration, formerly stationed at Ramstein, would know all of this.