In a July 27 Reuters article, political correspondent John Whitesides uncritically reported that "[Sen. John] McCain's campaign also needled [Sen. Barack] Obama about canceling a visit to see injured American troops at a base in Germany last week, implying that he did so because he could not bring the media along." Whitesides further wrote that the McCain campaign “even aired an advertisement in which the announcer says: 'And now, he made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras.' ” Whitesides did not, however, note any of the facts undermining the McCain campaign's criticism of Obama. As Media Matters for America has documented, Obama reportedly visited wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center without the media, and although he did not visit Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, he reportedly made phone calls to wounded soldiers there. Moreover, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported on July 24 that Obama “visited a casualty unit in the Green Zone” in Iraq “without photographers” several days before arriving in Germany.

Additionally, as ABC senior national correspondent Jake Tapper noted in a July 26 post on his blog Political Punch, “The McCain campaign provides no evidence for the assertion that being told he [Obama] couldn't bring media had anything to do with the trip's cancellation.” Similarly, in a July 26 post on the Time blog Swampland, national political correspondent Karen Tumulty wrote that "[t]here is absolutely no evidence" for the ad's suggestion that “Obama cancelled the trip because he was told he couldn't bring the media.” According to Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass, “We told military officials explicitly that Senator Obama had absolutely no intention of bringing any members of the media or photographers in with him to visit the wounded warriors” at Landstuhl.

In her Swampland post, Tumulty also noted that “there's a little problem with this line: 'And now, he made time to go to the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops.' Sure enough, the accompanying footage shows Obama playing basketball ... with the troops in Kuwait. [ellipses in original]”

From the July 25 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

MITCHELL: The background on the military flap is that they had clearly planned a trip to Rammstein. They were planning to visit the injured troops, and then the Pentagon explained they couldn't go as part of a political trip. The Obama campaign thought that they could go, leave the press corps on the tarmac, and then take off with military escort and make this one last visit, as he did, by the way, in Iraq. He visited a casualty unit in the Green Zone without photographers as part of the congressional delegation. But the military said that the rules are that he could only go as part of a previously arranged military congressional delegation to Rammstein.

Clearly, people in the campaign are really angry. They had wanted this to be the final stop on the trip here in Germany, and to do it without the press corps, just to do it on his own. But the objections of the military were that he is now being staffed by campaign aides, not by his Senate staff, which -- who were the people who of course were with him when he went with [Sen. Chuck] Hagel [R-NE] and [Sen.] Jack Reed [D-RI] in Iraq. So, you -- you know, the anger here is pretty intense at the Pentagon: They feel that the military are, you know, drawing some lines. They're not saying this publicly of course, but drawing lines that they might not have drawn for other people. He was planning to just go by himself, not with cameras, not with any entrourage, as he had done in Walter Reed in the past in Washington, as he did in Iraq, Joe.

JOE SCARBOROUGH (host): It's -- it's curious, if that's the case, why the campaign didn't make that announcement yesterday and allowed stories go like this. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of “he said, she said” in the days to come about this.

MITCHELL: Well, but they felt that they couldn't win. Yeah, they felt that they -- that they were in a, you know, no-win situation, that the Pentagon, perhaps, the military with cooperation from some Republican operatives, I mean, that's the -- the sort of scuttlebutt, that there have been some foreign policy advisers of John McCain with connections in the Pentagon, who've had something to do with this, but that is perhaps just the normal political paranoia of the season.

From the July 27 Reuters article:

As the Illinois senator prepared to switch his emphasis to the economy, McCain kept up his attacks on Obama's position on Iraq. McCain, in an interview broadcast on ABC's “This Week,” said Obama's call for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq over a 16-month period was designed to help his drive to win the Democratic nomination.

McCain's campaign also needled Obama about canceling a visit to see injured American troops at a base in Germany last week, implying that he did so because he could not bring the media along. It even aired an advertisement in which the announcer says: “And now, he 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 QUESTIONS OBAMA JUDGMENT

“Senator Obama doesn't understand,” McCain said in an interview conducted on Saturday. “He doesn't understand what's at stake here and he chose to take a political path that would have helped him get the nomination of his party.”

But McCain, an ardent supporter of the war, said he was not questioning the patriotism of his opponent, just his judgment.

Obama defended his call for troop withdrawal, saying it should have begun earlier, and the real lack of judgment was McCain's vote for the war in the first place.