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WASHINGTON: Barack Obama’s camp on Tuesday admitted the Democratic
hopeful made a mistake after a campaign flap blew up over his claim
that an uncle helped liberate the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
The comment Obama made on Monday has sparked a
torrent of attacks by the Republican Party and conservative bloggers,
who tried to portray the Illinois senator as naive and prone to
gaffes and exaggerations.
The Republican National Committee (RNC), already
training its fire on Obama, pointed out that it was the Soviet Red
Army in 1945, not United States forces, which liberated Auschwitz in
Poland.
“Obama’s frequent exaggerations and outright
distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to
lead as commander in chief,” RNC Spokesman Alex Conant said in a
statement.
Obama’s campaign Spokesman Bill Burton then
issued a statement saying that Obama’s great uncle was in fact
part of a unit that freed inmates at a subcamp of the concentration
camp at Buchenwald in Germany, and not Auschwitz.
“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 said.
Obama’s great uncle Charles Payne, his
grandmother’s brother, was a member of the US 89th Infantry
Division.
The candidate brought up the story on Monday,
the Memorial Day holiday when US war dead are honored, to relate the
harrowing personal toll many veterans pay when they return home from
traumatic foreign wars.
The Republican Party is using a tactic that
worked in its attacks on former Vice President Al Gore, who stood
accused during his 2000 presidential run of playing loose with the
facts.
Operatives frequently highlight missteps by
Obama, such as when he occasionally mangles the name of a town where
he is campaigning.
-- AFP
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