Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Obama was wrong on Jay Rockefeller

First, they don't brief their own surrogates before appearing on national television. Now they won't even get their facts straight on the surrogates!

ABC News:
During a rally in Westerville, Ohio, Obama argued that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., should have read the National Intelligence Report before making the decision to authorize war with Iraq.

He then summoned up his newest surrogate, Rockefeller, as an example.

"Jay Rockefeller read it, but she didn't read it. I don't know where all that experience got her because I have enough experience to know that if you have a national intelligence estimate and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, 'you should read this, that's why I voted against the war,' then you should probably read it."

The problem? Rockefeller voted for war.

Obama’s statement left the impression that Rockefeller was the chair of the Intelligence Committee, read the NIE report and then voted against the war. Rockefeller, who is currently the chair, was not chair at the time and cast his vote for war, not against it.
Clinton's campaign was quick to come back:
The Clinton campaign was quick to jump on the confusing comments, with a Clinton spokesman saying, "Sen. Obama is so desperate to divert attention from his limited national security experience that he's not just misleading voters about Sen. Clinton, he's also misleading voters about his own supporters. That is not change you can believe in."
But, there's more. Some in the Obama camp say that he was referencing Bob Graham, the former Senator of Florida. Is that so?
Slice Obama’s comment with that of the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, David Axelrod’s comments on ABC’s "This Week," when he told George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning, "Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who opposed the war in Iraq, who read the intelligence before the war, which Sen. Clinton concedes she did not, and who said that Barack Obama has the judgment and the maturity and the vision to lead."

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