Hannity & Colmes - Black Hawk Down Hero On Obama\'s Troop Nixing Controversy. Mike Durant 7/29/08\n\nJohn McCain\'s campaign continued to hammer Monday on Barack Obama\'s skipped visit to U.S. military installations during the European leg of his trip last week, saying the Democratic presidential candidate\'s reasons for not visiting the troops continue to shift.\n\n\"Senator Obama\'s campaign has about a dozen reasons as to why they were unable to visit the troops,\" McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker told FOX News on Monday.\n\nObama had originally planned to visit Ramstein Air Force Base and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center last week, but initially said Pentagon objections scuttled the trip.\n\nObama\'s chief strategist David Axelrod was quoted in Friday\'s Chicago Sun Times saying the Pentagon \"viewed this as a campaign event and therefore they said he should not come.\"\n\nOn Monday, Obama Communications Director Robert Gibbs said the campaign decided not to go to Landstuhl because Pentagon officials said it would be a political event, though the officials did not tell them not to visit.\n\n\"We never said that the Pentagon prevented us from going. What we did say was that the Pentagon considered the trip to be a campaign trip. That\'s when we decided that we weren\'t going to put our men and women into a political campaign event. That\'s why we decided not to go,\" Gibbs told MSNBC, according to a partial transcript of the show released by the Republican National Committee.\n\nThe RNC also pointed to eight other varying responses Obama and his supporters have provided in response to questions over avoiding the hospital. The continued push over the issue followed a Saturday release of a TV advertisement criticizing Obama for scratching the visit, and saying McCain puts his \"country first.\"\n\n\"What the Pentagon objected to of course is bringing the campaign apparatus and the photographers and the zoo that accompanies these candidates sometimes,\" Hazelbaker said, adding that might have been the point in which \"Obama\'s campaign decided that it was not important if they could not bring the photographers. I don\'t know. What I do know is that John McCain never misses an opportunity to thank our troops for the work they are doing in the field.\"\n\nMcCain said Sunday on ABC that if Pentagon officials tried to prevent him from visiting the troops, \"I guarantee you, there would have been a seismic event.\"\n\nThe McCain campaign also released a statement Monday from retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, who said Obama should have visited the troops, adding: \"That Barack Obama believes otherwise casts serious doubt on his judgment and calls into question his priorities.\" Durant\'s ordeal of being captured in 1993 by enemy forces in Somalia was made famous by the book and film \"Black Hawk Down.\"

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