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?