Liberals in and out of the media are constantly telling us that President Barack Obama is a really smart guy. He's a "genius" in the words of his chief sycophant Chris Matthews. And yet, for such a supposedly smart guy, Obama seems to be ill-informed about many things, like the fact that we have 50 states in this country or that the word corpsman isn't pronounced like a dead body.
The latest Obama gaffe came yesterday in a speech he gave to the Army's 10th Mountain Division in which he mistakenly identified a fallen member of that division as another soldier in a completely different Army unit who is alive.
As he so often does, Obama was speaking about himself before making the major gaffe:
First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there.
I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.
Trouble is, however, SFC Monti did, in fact, receive the award posthumously in 2009, three years after he was killed in Afghanistan in 2006. Obama did award the Medal of Honor to a living Army service member, Sal Giunta, a staff sergeant in another Army unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
Video is below:
Besides that gaffe, it's also worth noting that apparently Obama thinks being a presidential candidate is somehow service to the country. Right before making the gaffe above, he said the following:
Throughout my service, first as a senator and then as a presidential candidate and then as a President, I’ve always run into you guys. And for some reason it’s always in some rough spots.
Two gaffes in the span of a minute, neither of which will be reported by our state-run media. Tip of the hat to Blackfive who adds:
How does the Commander-in-Chief mix these heroes up? He put that medal around Giunta's neck and he stood with Monti's parents as they grieved. These fallen heroes leave such a great legacy, and we should know all their names. The ironic part of the speech, and this comes after the announcement of the politically pressured drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, was Obama's closing remark, "Know that your Commander-in-Chief has your back."
Indeed. But perhaps we're wrong. Maybe the real reason Obama makes mistakes like this isn't that he's stupid or just doesn't care about the little people. Maybe it's that his brain is just too smart for his mouth to keep up with, as Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum laughably tried to argue earlier this year.
Update: Just as expected, the network nightly newscasts have ignored this story. That's particularly egregious for NBC which spent three consecutive shows discussing Sarah Palin and Paul Revere. One would think that if alleged verbal miscues are going to be reported on that those of the president/commander in chief are slightly more newsworthy than those of a person who currently holds no political office and is not currently running for another one.
