Posted on 05/27/2008 11:48:44 AM PDT by PA Engineer
“My grandfather marched in Patton’s army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you,” he told a small group of veterans here
Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
How irnonic, the propaganda on the gates at Buchenwald was:
“Arbeit Macht Frie”
Work will make you free.
The Obamao is not one of “us” if a member of a American Family had been in on the liberation of a Death Camp or a Work Camp, one had best believe that it would be seared in our Familial memory as a Moral Lesson, the Obamao cannot be bothered, it is a useful allegory to the Obamao, no more, no less.
According to this source, the uncle is still alive, so it's just a matter of asking him.
As I noted earlier, I think the way he used it is a bigger problem. Implying that large numbers of American soldiers become mentally ill, thus all must be evaluated, based on the uncles 6 month long breakdown during which he consigned himself to the attic. I feel sorry for the man having to have these issues raised in his old age.
Interestink.
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. Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically...
Burton didn't address his uncles apparent mental instability, it's cause, or it's applicability to todays troops, but I'm sure he will. BTW, the uncle is apparently still alive. If he did suffer a breakdown, and I'd speculate that's BS, I'm sure he's pleased his nephew injected him in the campaign.
He more then likely is a Typical White Person ala The Obamao’s Grandmother....
How shameful that the man does not even know what his family did in WWII, especially during the Liberation of the Death and Work Camps....
It will be most interesting to see whether his great-uncle chooses to say anything. Can’t imagine he’d want to get involved in discrediting O-Gaffa unless there is a really big rift, but Mr. Payne (?) could certainly settle whether or not he was a PTSD case who disappeared in the attic for 6 months after the war, whether there really was an attic, etc.
The real issues, though, in my view is simply that Obama has botched the telling of this tale, twice (2002 and 2008) in a way that indicates he neither knows nor cares anything about WWII and Holocaust history (never mind his own “typical white person” family history). This guy researched and published a memoir in which he goes into great detail about his Kenyan “family” of the father he never knew, yet he knows almost nothing of the actual heroic WWII history of the actual “white person” family represented by his mother. What does that say about him?
The 2002 and 2008 versions could be different events, but he's either botched them, or like Hillary's sniper fire, come to believe his fabrications. My guess his uncle is getting a bit of attention whether he wants it or not. Whether or not the breakdown anecdote is true, I'll speculate not, a shame it has to be a topic of discussion in his old age.
I'm not quite sure why everyone assumes the "uncle" is Payne. Stanley Dunham had a brother, Ralph E., according to the 1930 Census (on the site you linked) who, according to this World War II Kansas Veterans Index, was drafted and inducted into the Army on May 28, 1942. Stanley (listed right after Ralph) enlisted and was inducted on June 18, 1942.
You may be right! Thanks.
Love it! So true.
Think it might be Charles E. Payne, who was inducted in 1942 from Butler County, KS, the same county which listed him in the 1930 census as a 5 year old child of Rolla & Leona Payne and brother of Madelyn, Obama’s grandmother.
Who knows, maybe Charles came home and locked himself away for a few days with a few beers and a carton of cigarettes and he has been turned into the poster child for WWII PTSD.
The Obama campaign has outed Payne as the PTSD case in the family.
Charming, no?
They must have been really well off. My family couldn’t afford an attic or a basement. My uncle had to stay on the porch.
osama hussein is the hildebeast in pants.
Now check out what he said in a speech in West Virginia in April:
“My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.
So, in April Obama claimed his grandfather heard stories from American soldiers who were the first to enter Auschwitz and Treblinka.
Good find! What I think is most significant, besides the huge gaffes of not having the basic facts right, is that Obama DID NOT CARE enough to learn the elementary facts!!
He researched and wrote a “memoir” dealing (mainly) with his Kenyan “family” via “dreams” of the biological father he never really knew. Yet, he cares not a whit about the “white” family that he now chooses to exploit for political purposes. If he cared at all about his white grandma’s family he’d know the most elementary facts, especially when HE chooses to bring them up in such a public arena.
People will say “oh, big deal, he mixed up the names.....” Yes it is a big deal, these are huge horrible momentous historical events (and also good events as Allied forces liberated Western Europe), and Obama could not be troubled to attain even a schoolboy level of knowledge before talking inaccurately about it in public.
It displays a shocking lack of curiosity, both about his own (”typical white person”) family and the major historical events of the Holocaust and WWII. No one made Obama bring this into his Presidential campaign — he chose to bring it up, at least twice now (plus another time we know of in 2002). Yet, Mr. Harvard Law is so completely ignorant of the whole subject that he had no idea what country Auschwitz and Treblinka were in, or that his Uncle/Great-Uncle/Grandfather were never too terribly close to those spots while they served in the ETO.
No one forced Obama to talk about this, but if he’s going to exploit, yes exploit, the Holocaust for his political purposed he’d damned well better have his facts straight..... especially such simple basic facts.
Do you have a link for this in April 2008 in WV?
This looks like the quote I’ve seen from his anti-Iraq-War speech in Oct. 2002 (he may have re-used the material, but I’m not finding the WV reference). Thanks.
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