Military bloggers mock Obama with misleading video Ron Brynaert

Published: Wednesday March 4, 2009





Print This Email This A few military blogs who lean to the right are mocking President Obama with a video that compares how Marines reacted to his recent visit with one by former President George W. Bush.



The video includes the observation by a CNN reporter that Obama received only "a tepid response" during his speech to Marines last Friday.



"Ouch," Drew M. at Ace of Spades observes. "Why, it's almost like they would follow Bush to Hell and back. Oh wait, they did. It's going to be a very long 4 years."



However, while one of the top military blogs is claiming that both visits occurred at the same military base, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, the clip of Bush actually was taken from his surprise Labor Day, 2007 visit to Iraq.



"President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday, leaving the White House secretly Sunday evening to fly to Al Asad airbase, in Anbar province, for meetings with U.S. military commanders, Iraqi leaders and some of the approximately 10,000 American troops stationed there," Time reported in September of 2007. The picture above clearly shows Bush wearing the same casual shirt as displayed in the video embedded below. Bush even mentions Labor Day at one point in the clip.



Blackfive writes, "The Real Revo has put up a video showing the difference between the reactions of the Marines at Camp Lejeune to George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama."



Blackfive's post is also entitled "The difference."



(Note: Blackfive's post was updated sometime after this article was published: "Some people are now accusing me of a smear job. I corrected the above statement about Lejeune as soon as I could. Besides, I don't think the fact that the party of the President really matters in discussions on whether the troops like him or not.")



Nowhere on the video or at the Real Revo blog does it note the difference between the two speeches. That the reaction to Bush was due to his making a surprise visit to a base in the middle of a war on a national holiday.



One user at YouTube complained, "Ok you guys I have to say the responces here are disturbing... I am not for Obama but the aganda of the video is doing the same as the Mainstream media. you have to consider the two instances were set in 2 very different settings... one in Iraq, and was not formal. The one with Obama was a formal event.... come on people think!!!"



In June of 2005, multiple news networks reported that Bush aides helped prompt Army soldiers to clap during one of his speeches.



"After President Bush's June 28 speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, reporters on ABC, NBC and Fox News noted that the only round of applause during the speech was initiated by Bush staffers," Media Matters wrote in 2005. "But CNN and MSNBC made no mention of the staffers' role, instead attributing the outbreak of applause to the troops. CBS' brief post-speech coverage made no mention of the applause."



NBC News anchor Brian Williams had observed to correspondent Kelly O'Donnell, "Kelly, some folks at home no doubt were curious about the lack of applause breaks. By pre-agreement between the White House and Fort Bragg, there was no entry applause as the soldiers were at attention. We were 23 minutes into it before the first break for applause. Were the crowd addressed or given instructions in any way before the president walked out?"



"I checked with some of those in uniform, and they were told to follow military protocol and to be polite," O'Donnell reported. "It was my observation that that one applause break was actually triggered by members of the president's advance team. They were just a few feet from me. They started to applaud-- applause is contagious, and it then swept through the room. There was applause when the president left the room after the speech was over but people in uniform here told me that they had planned to be polite and to follow protocol. So, that's the explanation behind that, Brian."



The following video was posted at YouTube:









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