Does Barack Obama Hate the Troops? Or Is That Just What Sean Hannity (and McCain/Palin) wants you to think.

Sean Hannity again tonight repeated what he has been saying for weeks (if not months) that Barack Obama accuses our troops of just "air raiding villages and killing civilians." Hannity knows exactly what was said by Barack Obama, but he doesn't want his viewers to know it because then they would know that Barack Obama wasn't attacking the troops at all.
What is even more disturbing is that the McCain campaign began using Hannity's argument as one of their attacks a couple weeks ago. In their interview with Hannity on Hannity and Others recently, they both expressed how disgusted they were with how Obama has disrespected the troops.



In addition to repeating that Barack Obama voted against funding for the troops (a reference to when Obama voted against a bill which would fund the troops without a withdrawal timeline. This was after her had voted for a bill to fund the troops, which John McCain voted against because it did include a timeline), they brought up a comment Obama made a year ago and has been grossly taken out of context. The comment came in the middle of a rally when Obama was discussing how troops in Afghanistan, because of limited resources, were forced to rely mainly on air strikes, which end up killing civilians. The one-second clip, repeated over and over by Sean Hannity over the past few weeks is now being used in a McCain campaign ad, and was referenced by McCain and Palin, who said Obama should be ashamed for this and that it should disqualify anyone from being Commander in Chief. Hannity, McCain, Palin, and the campaign ad claim Obama thinks “troops in Afghanistan are ‘just air-raiding villages and killing civilians,’” creating the false impression that Obama is disrespecting our troops.



The entire sentence they’ve butchered was, “We've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.” Not only have they taken a part of the whole quote to distort Obama’s intentions, but they keep pretending that this comment was just made.
A story done in Newsweek on Oct. 6 points out that the comment was made over one year ago at a campaign stop in August of 2007. His comments were in response to an Associated Press report that as of Aug. 1, 2007 Western forces had killed 286 civilians–55 more civilians than had been killed by Islamic militants in the same period. President Bush himself admitted that the number of civilian casualties was too high and expressed regret and concern to Afghan President Karzai. The Newsweek article also points out that, as of September of this year, nearly half of the estimated 1,445 civilian casualties were caused by Western forces. The article states, “On September 17, Defense Secretary Robert Gates apologized for civilian casualties, explaining that "while no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder." That same day, Gen. David D. McKiernan, the senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, told reporters that increased reliance upon air power was to blame for the rise in civilian casualties.”
Sean Hannity and the McCain Campaign took a one-year old quote from Barack Obama out of context to paint him as someone who sees our troops as irresponsible murderers, when in reality Obama was defending our troops and criticizing an administration that chose to use resources in Iraq, and left troops in Afghanistan with limited options. In the interview Sarah Palin says Obama's comment shows, "such a gross misunderstanding what our troops are doing in Afghanistan." I think this shows that Sarah Palin has a gross misunderstanding of what is going on in Afghanistan. Just one of many things she apparently doesn't understand. And she isn't the only one. Either they are all unaware of the situation in Afghanistan, or they just don't want to admit that the military in Afghanistan was left out to dry by the U.S. Government, and that airstrikes result in civilian deaths.
It’s no surprise that Sean Hannity, the disgusting pile of filth that he is, would sink to these depths. Afterall, he sounds like a broken record every night repeating the same things (Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, Fr. Flaeger, etc) over and over and over, and has even referred to himself as "one of McCain’s surrogates." In the analysis on his show following the VP debate while talking to Kit Bond, Hannity pointed at the camera and said, “He said about our troops, which is unforgivable, that they are air raiding villages and killing civilians...That is unforgivable, Senator Obama. And he ought to apologize. And he ought to be called by the media to apologize for that.” But John McCain has become more and more dishonorable and his campaign has become more and more disgusting. Now at rallies, twice people introducing the candidates have mentioned Barack Obama’s middle name as though it is a four-letter word, and while the campaign afterwards put out statements condemning the tactics, the comments are still being made. Cindy McCain lashed out at Obama for not funding her son, even though her husband had done the same thing weeks before. Both candidates are now (taking again from Hannity’s playbook) continuously bringing up William Ayers who served on a board with Obama for three years and who hosted a party for Obama’s candidacy at his house. The campaign and others, such as Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Karl Rove continue to reference the recent New York Times article on the relationship, but also continue to make claims that were disproven by the article. And now at rallies, McCain/Palin supporters have been heard saying, “terrorist,” “communist,” “treason” when Obama’s name has been mentioned by the candidates. Whether these were heard by the candidates or not at the time, the comments were heard and have for the most part been ignored by the campaign. These are just some examples in a growing trend by conservatives, and by the campaign itself to create fear about Obama. There’s obviously nothing wrong with saying someone’s middle name, but doing so with the knowledge that nearly one third of the population believes Obama is Muslim, and most of those same people are people who believe all Muslims are terrorists, is nothing more than good old fashioned racism. But I'll get to Hannity and his racist friends in my next posting.