Andrea Mitchell does her job, calls out McCain campaign for its latest dishonest ad (UPDATED)

Oh lookie, Andrea Mitchell does know something about being a journalist! Jason Linkins:

[I]t doesn’t take affection, or leg-tingles, to do what Andrea Mitchell did today (via Jed Report), which is to take John McCain’s despicable “Troops” ad and demonstrate what a high-toned piece of gutter fraudulence it is. Displaying nothing more than a studied neutrality in tone, and well-armed with the facts that she herself obtained while overseas with both the CODEL and the Obama campaign, Mitchell was a leader in the field of not letting lying dogs sleep. Terming the ad “literally not true,” and confidently summing up the ad as “inexplicable.”

Linkins points out that Andrea Mitchell’s assertions are completely backed up by the facts, and excerpts the report on FactCheck.org, a website which *cough* checks facts in media reports, and which all conservatives should bookmark. I’ll excerpt it, too:

A new McCain ad says Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.”

McCain’s facts are literally true, but his insinuation – that the visit was canceled because of the press ban or the desire for gym time – is false. In fact, Obama visited wounded troops earlier – without cameras or press – both in the U.S. and Iraq. And his gym workouts are a daily routine.

The Obama campaign canceled the visit with wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, Obama says, when he learned that the Pentagon would not allow him to bring along a retired Air Force major general who is serving as a foreign policy adviser to the campaign. Obama says that “triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political.”

Exactly. The McCain campaign is simply flat-out lying when they assert that Obama’s visit was cancelled because he “couldn’t bring cameras.” More explanation of that below. Also, the footage in the McCain ad of Obama “at the gym”? Yeah, that was actually Barack Obama visiting troops in Kuwait, the same visit where he hit a “THREE-POINTER FROM DOWNTOWN.”

Factcheck.org, continued:

The ad says Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops.” The announcer then goes on to say that it “seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras,” implying that’s the reason Obama canceled the visit.

It’s a fact that Obama canceled a visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at the last minute after planning it for weeks. And it’s a fact that reporters and their cameras would not have been allowed to accompany him. Furthermore, Obama probably did go to the gym that day, as he does practically every day. So the bare facts stated in the ad are true, but they don’t support McCain’s insinuation.

(snip)

Obama says he never planned to take reporters on the Landstuhl visit, and Department of Defense rules prohibited him from taking reporters on previous visits he made with wounded troops.

Reporters were not allowed to accompany him when he visited wounded troops at Walter Reed Medical Center on June 28. The small “protective pool” of reporters that routinely accompanies him was told by Obama’s staff to remain outside, in the van, according to a reporter covering the campaign. Similarly, Obama visited wounded troops in Baghdad earlier in his overseas trip, but he did so without reporters and “without a lot of fanfare, just to say ‘Thanks’,” according to Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who accompanied Obama.

So why did this happen the way it did? Well, it’s simple, and it has to do with Pentagon rules, as well as who was on each leg of the trip with Obama:

The military’s stated policy is to avoid “[a]ny activity that may be reasonably viewed as directly or indirectly associating the [Department of Defense] with a partisan political activity.” Members of Congress are allowed to be photographed with the troops and appear with them while serving as public officials, but not as political candidates. When Obama was in Kuwait and Iraq, he was traveling without reporters or campaign staff and visited military installations as part of a congressional delegation that included Sen. Reed and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Hagel said afterward, on CBS’ “Face the Nation” July 27: “We saw troops everywhere we went on the congressional delegation. We went out of our way to see those troops.”

But Hagel and Reed dropped off after the delegation visited the Middle East, and the European leg of Obama’s trip was a campaign trip, not an official one. Even so, Obama planned to leave reporters behind for a visit to Landstuhl, according to a press briefing by campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs.

(snip)

At first, it seemed the Obama camp was blaming the Pentagon for the cancellation. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jonathan Scott Gration, an Obama adviser who had planned to accompany him to Landstuhl, issued a statement saying, “We learned from the Pentagon last night that the visit would be viewed instead as … a campaign event.”

(snip)

Gibbs, and later Obama himself, then confirmed that it was the Obama campaign and not the Pentagon that decided to scrub the visit. Obama told the press that he had never planned to take reporters inside: “We were treating it the same way we treat a visit to Walter Reed … without any fanfare whatsoever.” And he said the discovery that Gration would not be allowed to come prompted the cancellation.

Ta-da, and then the McCain campaign (you know, the one that was going to stay above the fray) saw an opportunity to construct an “Obama hates the troops” smear that is only effective with fucking stupid people, but hey, that’s the base of the Republican party, so they put up the dishonest ad, the end.

As to the other claims lies in the ad, well, Factcheck takes care of those, too:

The McCain ad repeats the claim that Obama has not held “a single hearing on Afghanistan.” As we’ve already noted, both candidates have less-than-stellar records when it comes to attending Senate hearings on Afghanistan. The ad also repeats the misleading statement that Obama “voted against funding our troops.” As we’ve noted before, Obama voted in favor of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan all but once since he was sworn in.

So there you have it.

That’s how a dishonest right-wing smear is constructed. Isn’t it amoral?

Oh look, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow did their jobs, too! (They always do their jobs.)

(Oh, and that link just above is from The Jed Report, which is AWESOME. His heading for the following video is “Your liberal media…both of them.” Oh, how perfect.)

(Oh, and one more thing: Watch Rachel Maddow’s facial expressions from about 1:40 to 1:50. Candid honesty.)

ALSO: If the above video is being assy, click here to watch it.

ALSO ALSO: William Bradley has a piece at HuffPo that outlines 13 Things To Know About The 3rd Straight Mac Attack Ad. Deals with the factchecking side and McCain’s lies, but also delves into the sad scared marketing strategy that’s making Walnuts!! hide behind all this negativity. I really like numbers 11 and 12:

11. While the TV ad says that McCain is always there for the troops, he actually voted against the new GI Bill authored by Obama ally Jim Webb, the former Navy Secretary-turned-Virginia Senator. Webb, as it happens, is an old friend of McCain, who has called him “a legendary fighting man,” as befits the most highly decorated Marine combat officer of the Vietnam War. McCain lost badly in the Senate on Webb’s new GI bill, but he and President Bush later tried to take some credit for its passage.

12. And with regard to always being there for the troops, it is interesting to note that McCain actually voted against $360 million for armored tactical wheeled vehicles for units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that McCain just held a big ticket fundraiser at the home of one of the country’s largest defense contractors, Ronald Perelman, whose MacAndrews & Forbes holding company owns AM General, manufacturer of the HumVee. The HumVee became known in the Iraq War as a “Purple Heart box.”

Ugh. It’s so offensive to everyone who knows better, especially those of us with family in the military, when John McCain portrays himself as being “there for the troops.” No. John McCain is a traitor to the troops he used to serve alongside, which is easily evident if you’ve studied his record. (That is, if you’re some idiot Republican who wants to argue that last point, don’t do so unless you’ve studied his record and can show me all the — fictitious — times he’s supported the troops. And no, voting to continue a war that’s not worthy of their sacrifice isn’t “supporting the troops,” you fuckwit.)