Posted by Jed Lewison on Sat Jul 26, 2008 at 10:27 AM Pacific

DoD flack pushing Landstuhl smear has anti-Obama history

DoD's Bryan Whitman

AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay documents that one of the key DoD spokesmen pushing the the attack on Barack Obama for not visiting wounded troops at Landstuhl is Bryan Whitman, who has a history of pursuing attacks against Barack Obama.

My personal favorite part of Whitman's on-the-record quote is "quite frankly, I expected them to have the visit." First, in Washington, DC "quite frankly" means "I'm lying." Second, if, as he claims, he just told "them" that they couldn't make a political visit, why in the world would he expect them to visit?

It's quite stunning that reporters continue to treat a guy like Whitman as if he is an honest broker instead of a political operator. Consider:

Whitman was a key source in blowing up the story of Iranian boats who were said to have threatened an attack on U.S. Navy vessels. It turned out the story was fake.
Whitman helped misrepresent the story of Jessica Lynch, a key part of the government's early propaganda for the Iraq war.
Whitman was a leading defender of managing the initial coverage of the Iraq war through the "embedded" reporter policy.
Whitman defended restricting press access to photos of the coffins of fallen soldiers returning to the United States from war zones, even when no family or personally identifiable features were present.

Finally, you can also included former ABC reporter Geoff Morrell on the list of hacks at the Pentagon: he's now the DoD's top spokesman, and, predictably, has turned against Obama.