Yet Another Palin Lie

by sarabeth at 11:44 am on September 13th, 2008 in 2008 Presidential, Corruption, Lipstick on a Pig, St. John McCain

The Boston Globe:

Sarah Palin’s visit to Iraq in 2007 consisted of a brief stop at a border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait, the vice presidential candidate’s campaign said yesterday, in the second official revision of her only trip outside North America.

Following her selection last month as John McCain’s running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a “military outpost” inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin’s foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

But in response to queries about the details of her trip, campaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border when she visited Khabari Alawazem Crossing, also known as “K-Crossing,” on July 25, 2007.

Asked to clarify where she traveled in Iraq, Palin’s spokeswoman, Maria Comella, confirmed that “She visited a military outpost on the other side of the Kuwait-Iraq border.”

It was the second such clarification in as many weeks of the itinerary of what Palin has called “the trip of a lifetime.” Earlier, the campaign acknowledged that Palin made only a refueling stop in Ireland.

At this point it’s starting to look like everything the McCain-Palin campaign has said to sell Palin to the American people is contaminated by lies or deception of one kind or another.

It’s hard to see how a trip to the Kuwaiti side of the Kuwait-Iraq border got described as a visit to a military outpost inside Iraq, except as a deliberate misrepresentation, a conscious lie. Had it somehow been an honest mistake, the initial statement would have been followed by a correction. Instead, they embellished the lie by going on to call it an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

The funny thing is that the national media had by and large been sitting quietly to one side for months while McCain and his campaign peddled one lie after another. Almost as if by prior agreement, the national media cheerfully ignored a pattern of consistent lying—about his own record and policies, and about Obama’s record and policies. Not just that, they continued to champion McCain as a man of honor and integrity.

But for whatever reason, the Palin lies proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. One after another, media outlets started to call the McCain-Palin campaign on these lies. One after another, commentators began to openly describe, and declare their disgust at, the McCain campaign’s continuing lies.

And it threatens now to become the media narrative about the McCain campaign. There’s a very real possibility that for the remaining seven weeks of this campaign, stories in major media outlets will routinely mention the word “lies” every time the McCain campaign is referenced. Presumably some voters will notice, and become uncomfortable about voting for McCain? Uncomfortable enough to save this country from itself?

Comments

  1. Edie Allen wrote:

    If McCain and Palin are elected we will be subjected to 4 more years of the same Bush Administration policies that we have suffered thru for 8 years. The Iraq war was a diastrous choice. Even when President Bush knew he had made a mistake he refused to admit it. However, he is now calling for things to be done that Obama has said should be done. If we want a change , we had better hope that Obama and Biden are elected.

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 1:29 pm

  2. JOJO wrote:

    tHIS A TEST FOR ALL AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO WORHIP PERSONALITES WTH OUT THINKING WAKE UP BEFORE IT IS TO LATE INSTEAD OF TO WORK FOR IMPEACHMENT IT IS BETTER NOT TO ELECT LIERS McCANE AND PALYNN.

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 4:01 pm

  3. Ritaa United Kingdom wrote:

    Simply unbeliveable! Is America sure McCain is with it? He surely must be going senile!!! Utter disgrace!!!

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 4:18 pm

  4. Ritaa United Kingdom wrote:

    Simply unbelieveable! Is America sure McCain is with it? He surely must be going senile!!! Utter disgrace!!!

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 4:18 pm

  5. rpj wrote:

    WELL, MCCAIN FOUND HIMSELF A “CHATTY CATHY” FOR A VP. THE PROBLEM IS SOMEONE SCREWED UP PROGAMING THE DOLL. IT’S AT A POINT NOW WHERE NOT EVEN SARAH CAN KEEP ALL THE LIES STRAIGHT.
    THE REAL PROBLEM IS MCCAIN FOR HAVING PICKED SOMEONE HE DIDN’T VET,NOR DID HIS CAMPAIGN. THEY WON’T LET THE PRESS OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE VET HER EITHER.
    IF SHE KEEPS TALKING, SHE WILL BURY HERSELF ALONG WITH MCCAIN

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 5:33 pm

  6. RO wrote:

    IF they are misleading us with her travels,,,my goodness, what else are they misleading us with? I just can’t trust someone who misleads us over and over. IF this was a honest mistake, it should have been corrected the next day…not a couple of weeks later. Shame>

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 7:23 pm

  7. Adam wrote:

    Can someone find me the statement from anyone in the McCain camp that Palin visited Iraq?

    I read another blog claiming that CNN is making this allegation up and that Palin never claimed to have visted Iraq at all.

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 8:09 pm

  8. NickAtNight wrote:

    Her answer from the recent interview:
    “Canada. Mexico. And then, yeah, that trip that was a trip of a lifetime, to visit our troops in Kuwait and stop and visit our injured soldiers in Germany. That was a trip of a lifetime and it changed my life.”

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 9:00 pm

  9. Adam wrote:

    Well I see that CNN rewrote the story since you started this blog. They now have a completely different tone and are no longer offering commentary.

    Here is what my offer still stands. Find me a link of ANYONE in the Palin camp claiming that she EVER visted Iraq.

    Here is my e-mail: adamkralic@hotmail.com

    I thank you,

    Adam

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 9:01 pm

  10. Adam wrote:

    Listen…I am not happy with the country as it stands either. I understand frustration…especially of the middle class of which I am a member. I take no politician’s words as fact. NONE OF THEM. It is MORE difficult to research sound bytes and misinformation for yourself…but it is ALWAYS worthwhile to do so. I have not found anything anywhere from the McCain/Palin camp that says that she ever visted Iraq. Therefore her not having visted there…is a non-issue. But if you can find the “smoking gun” I am willing to change my opinion on the issue. But I refuse to believe CNN on a single thing anymore as this is NOT the first lie I have caught them in.

    Just think for yourselves. Doubt everything and everyone.

    and be nicer to each other.

    The people you are calling stupid are your equals . Think about what that means.

    Adam

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 9:12 pm

  11. mss wrote:

    Adam, Palin even admitted it on her interview with Charles…watch the interview…

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 9:45 pm

  12. Ken Spitz wrote:

    We may soon get to understand more about her claim to have visited Canada. It could have been to hunt moose or to see the Niagara Falls. Of course the good thing is that when US citizens visit Canada, there is no record in their passport…so she may get away with some lie. Actually, McCain must have found her ideal to go with him, as his life too is a pack of lies, which are not being brought out. Everybody knows about him cheating on his first wife…but he is a social conservative and has their support. We know that his wife had run a charity so that she can use it to get drugs for herself and got a doctor’s career killed!

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 9:48 pm

  13. matt wrote:

    adam, this is not one of those battles you should take on:

    Aides to Gov. Sarah Palin spent Saturday scrambling to explain details of her only trip outside North America in the wake of a report that that trip did not include travel into Iraq, as the McCain-Palin campaign had initially claimed.

    Palin made an official visit to see Alaskan troops in Kuwait in July of 2007. There, she made a stop at a border crossing with Iraq on July 25, according to the Boston Globe, but did not go further into the country. “Sarah Palin’s visit to Iraq in 2007 consisted of a brief stop at a border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait, the vice presidential candidate’s campaign said yesterday, in the second official revision of her only trip outside North America,” the Globe’s Bryan Bender wrote, adding, later in his story: “[C]ampaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border.”

    Lieutenant Colonel Dave Osborn, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 207th Infantry of the Alaska National Guard told the Globe she did not venture into Iraq. “You have to have permission to go into a lot of areas, and [the crossing] is where her permissions were,” he said.

    Late Saturday, a Palin spokeswoman provided yet a third revision to the story, stating that the Alaska governor briefly traveled a quarter of a mile across the border into Iraqi territory at the crossing point.

    “Last summer, Governor Palin traveled to Kuwait where she visited Alaskan National Guard troops deployed to the war in Iraq at Camp Arifjen. While she was there she traveled to the K Crossing on the Kuwait-Iraq border, and a quarter mile into Iraq,” spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said. “According to the General who traveled with her, while she was there she presided over a re-enlistment ceremony of an Alaskan National Guard soldier.

    “En route back to the United States, she traveled to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. While in Germany, Governor Palin visited wounded soldiers at the Landstuhl military hospital. She then returned home.”

    Palin was accompanied on the trip across the border by Maj. Gen. Michael Sumrall, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for National Guard Matters, according to the campaign.

    Earlier, the campaign also said she had been to Ireland, but that turned out to have been a refueling stop on the same July trip. McCain aides have expressed indignation at questions about her slim foreign travel.

    >The people you are calling stupid are your equals

    no.

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 10:13 pm

  14. Adam wrote:

    “The Boston Globe reported Saturday that Palin visited the Iraqi side of a border crossing — but never journeyed past the checkpoint.”

    Ok. So she DID visit Iraq…but only barely.

    This is the smoking gun?

    Well if you refuse to acknowledge your fellow humans as equals…then you are not a liberal.

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 10:54 pm

  15. matt wrote:

    and if you won’t acknowledge blatant lying then you’re just as stupid, or a liar yourself.

    more lies…

    Posted 13 Sep 2008 at 11:23 pm

  16. sarabeth wrote:

    Adam,

    1) Don’t understand why you are going on about CNN in #7 and #9. In the post, I quote The Boston Globe (they are the ones who broke the story).

    2) Does it strike you for even a moment that if Palin aides and the McCain campaign had not claimed she visited a military outpost inside Iraq or made an excursion into the Iraq battle zone, then the campaign’s pushback would have focused on that, instead of defensively clarifying that she went only up to the border?

    If you’re determined to believe the campaign never made these claims, that’s your business. But you can’t really pretend that this makes any sense under the circumstances.

    (For the record, NickAtNight in #8 is wrong. That’s not the claim the Globe story refers to.)

    Posted 14 Sep 2008 at 4:56 am

  17. Adam wrote:

    Good morning Sara,

    1) I got the story from CNN and the blogs link at the bottom of the article led me here. CNN is my first news source that I generally read.

    2) Sara I’ve read a great deal of news articles. The past decade or so has seen a tremendous erosion of journalistic standards imo. The journalists appear to have an answer they want…THEN they write a story based upon this desired outcome. I’ve seen it on both sides on the fence. It’s getting worse by the day imo. Both sides have been caught by myself running at full speed with half truths thinking that the American people are too stupid to research anything for themselves. Truth is I do not believe them unless I have concrete evidence that they aren’t spinning something. I’m sorry but this smells of spin. I have been presented with “evidence” that still doesn’t tell me exactly what was originally said. Where is the part about Iraqi battle zones or military outposts? Would a military checkpoint count as a outpost or not anyways? See what I mean? Gray.

    FYI: I voted for Bill Clinton’s 2nd term and George Bush Jr.’s 1st.

    I AM the voter demographic that both sides currently covet. And more than anything I wish there was a third party to vote for. Obama has next to no experience but is a very charismatic figure. (I have always realized the importance of charisma) McCain has tremendous experience but next to no charisma. I am not tremendously worried about Biden or Palin to be honest. They are vPs. They are NOT who I am voting for ultimately. The Democrats focusing on Palin…doing their very best to discredit her in any way possible…is not helping their cause imo.

    Those are my opinions and in less than 2 months I have to be confident that the person I am voting for has a doable plan for the nation.

    Posted 14 Sep 2008 at 8:00 am

  18. matt wrote:

    >I AM the voter demographic that both sides currently covet.

    and may the spaghetti monster have mercy on our souls…

    Posted 14 Sep 2008 at 8:29 am

  19. sarabeth wrote:

    Very full of yourself, I see, but what does any of this have to do with my post, or my previous comment?

    You went on at great length but couldn’t even address the simple point I made in (2).

    If all you want to do is vent without any relation to the post or previous comments, you should go start your own blog.

    Posted 14 Sep 2008 at 8:32 am

  20. tom wrote:

    “Well if you refuse to acknowledge your fellow humans as equals…then you are not a liberal.”

    everyone should be TREATED as equals. in no way shape or form do i consider everyone to BE equal. only a fucking moron would think that is what the concept of “equality” is about.

    Posted 14 Sep 2008 at 6:35 pm

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