NYT Blog: Kerry criticizes McCain's use of Petraeus Photo

[beachmom]

Kerry Criticizes McCain’s Use of Petraeus Photo



On the heels of a directive to soldiers from America’s top military official to stay out of politics, Senator John McCain acknowledged that his use of Gen. David H. Petraeus’s picture in a fund-raising pitch was not appropriate.

“It won’t happen again,” he vowed at a news conference this afternoon.

This morning, the Obama camp dispatched a statement from Senator John Kerry criticizing Mr. McCain’s use of a photo of the top commander in Iraq in a fund-raising pitch that went out to supporters via e-mail on Thursday.

“It’s deeply disappointing that Sen. McCain is using a picture of General Petraeus in uniform to raise money and launch negative attacks,” Mr. Kerry said in the statement.

...

As Mr. Kerry points out, the appeal less than a week after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued an open letter to people in uniform, saying that “The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways.”

“The McCain campaign did not ask for permission to use the photo,” said a spokesman for General Petraeus, Lt. Col. Joseph M. Yoswa. “General Petraeus is aware of the photo being used. By no means does the use of his photo mean he has endorsed anybody. He has not. He won’t. He remains apolitical.”

This is once again an excellent task for Kerry to do for the Obama campaign given his military cred. And at least in this case, Kerry got McCain to back down, and admit he had done something wrong.

[beachmom]

1. I re-tooled it a bit. Given McCain's inability to admit he made a mistake on troop levels,

this was a rather simple task for Kerry to get done.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6188949

[TayTay]

2. Nice find.

Sen Kerry remains a great surrogate for Obama.

It must really rankle McCain to have Kerry be the one to catch him on this stuff. lol