Was Obama’s Uncle in the Russian Army?
By Albert N. Milliron
U.S. presidential candidate, Barrack Obama, while on a campaign stop in New Mexico was discussing the tribulations of soldiers who experience the hell of the combat theater. Obama was explaining the disorder called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he shared “I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps,” “And the story in my family is that when he came home, he just went into the attic, and he didn’t leave the house for six months. Alright? Now, obviously something had affected him deeply, but at the time, there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.”
The problem with Obama’s story is that it wasn’t U.S. Soldiers that Liberated Auschwitz but the Russians. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered.
In the annals of the 2008 campaign, Barrack Obama’s Auschwitz moment may yet become the stuff of legend.
For months, the Republican National Committee, grumbling John McCain staffers and an array of conservative bloggers have tried to label Obama as a serial exaggerator and an heir to Al Gore, who Republicans successfully tarred in 2000 as someone who claimed to have discovered Love Canal and invented the Internet.
It just wasn’t sticking.
Now, they think they’ve caught him red handed.
Obama didn’t mince words in the story of his uncle yesterday in New Mexico. As he spoke of the need to provide combat veterans better health care, especially better mental health care, Obama let loose a three-Pinocchio doozy:
Source: blog.washingtonpost.com via politisite
Actually Obama did not fabricate this story as GOP and Clintonians had hoped. The campaign said that Obama’s great uncle, Charlie Payne, served in the 89th Infantry Division, and that the unit was among those to liberate Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945 not Auschwitz as Obama had claimed. No matter what the Clintons are saying about this mis-speak it’s still not sniper fire in a well secure tarmac in Bosnia.
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