Obama says his Uncle helped liberate Auschwitz

During the same Memorial Day gathering where he said he saw many of the nation's fallen heroes in the audience Barack Obama recalled how his uncle "was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps."

During a moment of deep reflection the candidate said that after this experience upon his return from the war his uncle went up into the attic for six months. Senator Obama mused, “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,”...."In World War Two we didn't have the concept of post traumatic stress syndrome. People had to basically handle it on their own,".

The Senator's narrative was quite touching except for the fact that it wasn't quite true. American troops did not liberate Auschwitz in World War II. The prisoners who were confined in that man-made Hell were liberated by soldiers of the Soviet Union in the First Army of the Ukrainian Front, under the command of Marshal Koniev, on January 27, 1945.

Obama also forgot to mention to his listeners that his mother was an only child so he couldn't have had an uncle who served in World War II. The Obama campaign later issued a "clarification" stating that it was the Senator's great uncle Charlie Payne on his grandmother's side who helped in the liberation of Ohrdruf a sub-camp of Buchenwald and not Auschwitz.

I guess the Senator mis-remembered.

ABC political reporter Jack Tapper remarks, "The man has been a one-man gaffe machine."

Tapper comments on the propensity of many Obama supporters to accept anything the candidate tells them. He quotes Obama supporter Kathleen Geier who says in her talking points memo Obama is not Jesus that she's "getting wierded out" by some of Obama's supporters.

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, "Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work."

Tapper also mentions Time Magazine's s Joe Klein noticing "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" of Barack Obama.

Creepy indeed.