Obama’s uncle gaffe
A reader complained this morning that we “fixed” Barack Obama’s “uncle” error in the short item we ran today on Page A3. Obama said “uncle” in his speech. Our item said “great-uncle,” she said.
“Obama got camp wrong, but liberation was real” read the item’s headline.
The first paragraph said: “Barack Obama’s campaign says the candidate made a mistake when he said a great-uncle helped liberate the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz during World War II.”
The caller noted that Obama had said the liberator was his uncle.
The second and third paragraphs read: “Obama said Monday that his uncle was among the first U.S. troops at Auschwitz. But Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces.”
“The campaign said Tuesday that he named the wrong camp. They said it was actually Buchenwald.”
The caller hadn’t made it to the second graph before she called to ask for a correction. When she heard “Obama said Monday that his uncle…” from the second paragraph, she accepted the item as correct.
In truth, though, the headline and the item had Obama’s campaign correcting the location. But the correction of the relationship was pretty nuanced in the item we ran.
Here’s a story from Christopher Wills of the Associated Press that offers a fuller explanation:
The Barack Obama campaign said Tuesday the candidate mistakenly referred to the wrong Nazi death camp when relating the story of a great-uncle who helped liberate the camps in World War II.
The Democratic presidential candidate said the story is accurate except that the camp was Buchenwald, not Auschwitz.
“Senator Obama’s family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II especially the fact that his great-uncle was a part of liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald,” campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. “Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically.”
Aides said Tuesday that his grandmother’s brother, Charlie Payne, helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp in April 1945 as part of the 89th Infantry Division.
In a meeting Monday with veterans, Obama discussed the importance of improving treatment for soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress. To illustrate his point, he talked about his own family.
“I had an uncle who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. The story in our family was that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months,” Obama said. “Now, obviously something had really affected him, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.”
Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces as they marched across Poland in January 1945. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says Americans liberated several death camps in Germany, including Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen.
“On April 4, 1945, the 89th overran Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Ohrdruf was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops in Germany,” according to the museum. “A week later, on April 12, Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley visited Ohrdruf to see, firsthand, evidence of Nazi atrocities against concentration camp prisoners.”
Obama’s mistaken mention of the camp on Monday quickly generated Internet chatter, ranging from puzzlement to outrage. The Republican Party demanded an explanation.
“It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
I’m sure a lot of people have uncles, great uncles, and close family friends all referred to simply as “uncle”. Big whoop. The real issue is Obama’s rapidly reoccurring propensity for not just gaffes, but outright lies and misstatements of fact.
If I recall correctly, Dan Quayle made at most two or three simple gaffes during the presidential campaign and the press turned him into the stupidest man on the planet. They then transferred that title to Pres Bush not because he’s actually stupid or shown to have lied about anything, but because he’s often inarticulate. Obama, on the other hand, has flat out lied or “misspoken” repeatedly about his relationships with politically connected ministers, left-wing terrorists, lobbyists and campaign contributors, when his parents first met, how many US States there are, etc., and the fawning press swoons over him like a school girl.
If readers want this much detail about the end of WWII, they can look it up themselves. The Post does its readers a grave disservice by not applying the same level of scrutiny into this candidate’s grasp of the facts as it does others.
This pretty well sums it all up: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2008/05/27/bozell-column-barack-potatoe-obama
I would like to know why the PD did not have this story about Congr. Jefferson losing bid to dismiss his bribery case:
http://www.ktbs.com/news/Judge-rejects-Jeffersons-motion-to-dismiss-bribery-charges-12433/
And why the story about Czech President Vaclav Klaus saying how we are losing our freedoms because of the global warming commies.
Senator Obama shared a family story about his great uncle who was so traumatized by having been part of the troops going into Buchenwald that his uncle stayed in his house for quite some time. Yet the only thing folk want to talk about is that Senator Obama said “Auschwitz” instead of “Buchenwald”.
I am certain everyone has a family story of a related type that gets passed down and some of the details get blurred. This is normal and happens.
Dan Quayle brought it on himself when he “corrected” an elementary school student saying “potato” had an “e” on the end of it. He was doing a publicity tour of schools and did it in front of the press. Of course I remember the joke during that era was that President George Bush (father) was safe from assassination because no one wanted to have “President Quayle”.
For those who actually care about the point Senator Obama was trying to make about the profound negative effect troops going into the concentration camps might have suffered from:
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/
http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/images/eur72160.jpg
http://www.holocaust-education.dk/lejre/koncentrationslejrene.asp
I am glad to hear that some people think that the current President Bush doesn’t lie — it’s nice to know that there still are people who believe in fairies.
Wow, The PD surely went to a lot of trouble to make a feeble attempt justify Hussein Obama’s ignorance of history. Trust me, it didn’t fly.
Is the editorial board embarrassed?
Has anyone verified the revised story?
Every so often, it’s nice to see Obama drag out the old white folks in his family, when it’s politically advantageous.
Senator Obama’s people corrected the mistaken memory.
Dan Quayle “corrected” a child’s spelling of “potato” to “potatoe”, even the child knew better.
The point remains. Senator Obama’s uncle (or is it his great-uncle as in earlier versions of this story) was so profoundly affected by what he saw, that he sequestered himself away from the world. Of course WWII and Korean War vets did not have the type of treatment and understanding for what we now call PTSD.
johnh,
For a man who claim to be so much more intelligent than most beings, why can’t you see that it was a family story that got mistold and had nothing to do with ignorance of history. And what is it with the Hussein Obama, Little Chief John John?
DW-You gotta understand this came from a guy who thinks Eskimos ran the Japanese out of Alaska.
When Obama has to talk off-script, he can’t help but make mistakes. That’s why he has been so protected for so long. He got caught up in the whole speaking to our enemies debacle that he can’t back out now and it occurred during a question and answer session. We all have versions of what our ancestors’ lives but I would be the first one to say, in a speech that I was shooting from the hip on, that “family lore has it that…”. Obama is so well educated that he should know not to make those types of mistakes.
B. Hussein Obama said he campaigned in 57 states and had one more to go.
So stand gooey eyed in line to drink his KoolAid. Maybe we should start reading on how to survive a nuclear holocaust.
http://www.aina. org/news/ 20080607193932. htm
Obama’s Plan To Disarm The U.S.
The Obamatons of the mainstream media have failed to report one of the most
chilling campaign promises thus far uttered by the presumptive Democrat
nominee for president.
He made it before the Iowa caucus to a left-wing pacifist group that seeks
to reallocate defense dollars to welfare programs. The lobbying group,
Caucus for Priorities, was so impressed by Obama’s anti-military offering
that it steered its 10,000 devotees his way.
In a 132-word videotaped pledge (still viewable on You-Tube), Obama agreed
to hollow out the U.S. military by slashing both conventional and nuclear
weapons.
The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is
breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys
it’s fighting. Here is a transcript:
“I’m the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and
as president, I will end it.
“Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will
cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize
space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.
“I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the
Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending.
“Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that
goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the
production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our
ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear
arsenal.”
You can bet that Obama will not make this sweeping indictment of our
security forces again as he tries to move to the center in the general
election. But this is what he thinks, and this is what he plans to do.
His campaign Web site doesn’t list a separate category for military or
defense under “Issues.” But search shows near-identical language there
regarding nuclear weapons. His plan, needless to say, is frighteningly
irresponsible given the world threats. While there is fat in the defense
budget, defense spending both as a share of GDP and the total federal budget
are still at historically low levels, despite the war. And while cutting fat
out of the defense budget is a worthy goal, Obama would cut beyond fat to
bone. Caucus for Priorities aims to redirect 15% of the Pentagon’s
discretionary budget away from “obsolete Cold War weapons towards education,
health care, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger and
deficitreduction. ” On the chopping block: the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey,
the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army’s Future Combat
System. Cutting allegedly “unproven” missile defense systems is music to Kim
Jong Il’s and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’ s ears, let alone all the PLA generals
wishing our destruction. Yet Obama wants to kill a program that’s yielding
success after success, with both sea- and land-based systems. The military
just this week intercepted a ballistic missile near Hawaii in a sea-based
missile defense test.
Proposing “deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal” amounts to unilateral
disarmament, and it’s suicidal given China’s and now Russia’s aggressive
military buildup.
Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea threaten nuclear madness, and Osama bin
Laden dreams of unleashing a nuclear 9/11 on America.
In contrast, John McCain has vowed: “We must continue to deploy a safe and
reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior
conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our
allies.”
We’ve been down this road before. President Clinton pursued a
denuclearization program, including his 1995 pledge to sign a Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty, and it led to him kicking open our nuclear labs to the
Chinese, who proceeded to steal our warhead secrets and strengthen their own
arsenal.
Like the Ben & Jerry’s crowd that supports him, Obama believes “real”
national security is “humanitarian foreign aid” — essentially using our
troops as international mealson-wheels in Africa.
We’ve been down that road before, too, in Somalia and elsewhere. Thanks, but
we don’t need a third Clinton, or a second Carter, term.
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