The Truth About The Bracelet

Right wing bloggers have launched a new smear about Obama but The Chicago Tribune has the real story:

After Tracy Jopek gave Sen. Barack Obama a bracelet in honor of her son who was killed in Iraq, she asked Obama not to mention the bracelet on the campaign trail.

But Jopek told The Associated Press on Sunday that she’s satisfied with how Obama discussed it during last week’s presidential debate…

“I am a mother, a mother who lost her son. It’s hard to know what’s right, what’s wrong about this war. Very hard,” she said. “And I know there are a lot of families who lost loved ones.”

So she e-mailed the Obama campaign through its Web site asking that he not mention it during debates or speeches…

“His response in the debate was exactly that, a response, after John McCain put it out there first,” she said. “I think it was an appropriate response — he was just saying there’s another side to the story, there’s two different viewpoints.”

Obama’s comment sparked a number of angry comments from bloggers who suggested Obama was exploiting her son’s death to score political points. Jopek said those bloggers might have heard comments that her son’s father made on Wisconsin Public Radio on March 20.

In an interview with Glen Moberg, National Guard Staff Sgt. Brian Jopek said his ex-wife asked Obama not to wear the bracelet at any further public appearances. But Obama was still apparently wearing it, he said.

“So, that’s his own choice. I mean that’s something Barack Obama, that’s a choice that he continues to wear it despite Tracy asking him not to,” he told Moberg.

Tracy Jopek said she didn’t hear the interview but that her ex-husband, who is currently stationed in Cuba, mischaracterized her viewpoint.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    chris greta says:

    I’m with HeroBracelets.org. We’re the organization that produces the memorial bracelets to raise funds for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. I’ve seen a lot of flap about Obama wearing the bracelet. I’ve actually had many conversations with Mrs. Jopek. She was thrilled that then, Senator Obama was wearing the bracelet. And other members of her family wanted bracelets exactly like the one she had given Obama. So this is all a non-issue. Sorry.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    It was an issue only because the right wing was spreading falsehoods on this, which was the reason for this post debunking the attacks.

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