Apparently earlier in the week Barack Obama was discussing his lack of military service and transitioned into those member of his family that had served. In this eloquent but largely substance-less oration, he claims that his uncle was part of an American army unit that liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, and later suffered mental anguish from what he saw. A compelling story but one that is demonstrably false. Giving him the benefit of the doubt that his mother actually has a brother and that man served in the European theater during WWII, he would have been the only American in Poland at Auschwitz; it was liberated in early 1945 by the Soviet Red Army many miles from where any American forces would be for the next 50+ years.
I hesitate to call names but Obama is quickly earning himself a Clintonian reputation for truthfulness.
See LGF for the full story and the Obama camp's continued efforts to redefine the word "is."
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Okay, I had to go look this up, and apparently it really is true that his great-uncle was at the liberation of Buchenwald, and Obama simply confused the names. If you're not a history buff, that might be easy to do, as Auchwitz (I can't spell) is the most famous of concentration camps.
ReplyDeleteAgain, this doesn't really bother me. Clearly, it's a gaffe, but as someone who speaks all day for a living, I've made quite a few. If my students recorded everything I said and then played it during a campaign, I might be in trouble.
Hope you get to feeling better.
I will concede that this is a relatively easy mistake to make once off the cuff, but it isn't the first time he has evoked these things when it suits his agenda. Look at the second paragraph in this famous 2002 anti-war speech. It's becoming a pattern...
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Barack_Obama's_Iraq_Speech
Check out the Youtube video were he claims to have visited 57 states. I think he meant to say 57 stops/visits to states. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws
When you speak in public all day everyday, you're going to get things wrong. Technically, "fellow troops" could have meant Allied troops.
I think the larger issue should be that he gave an anti-war speech (or whatever his stance on an issue is) rather then getting a fact wrong.