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International News Title: From the Campaign to the Battlefront After a long day training to be deployed to Iraq, Navy reservist Mark Lippert unlaces his desert boots and pulls out a BlackBerry email device from his dusty backpack. Checking his messages, he spots an email from the presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama: "I miss you, brother." Mr. Lippert, a lieutenant junior grade sporting a buzz-cut and desert camouflage, is training here before being shipped out to Iraq, where he will serve as an intelligence officer for the Navy SEALs. In his civilian life, he is the chief foreign-policy adviser for Sen. Obama -- the Democrat whose most well-known foreign-policy stance is his opposition to the Iraq War Lt. Lippert is about to join. [photo] Mark Lippert in Sen. Barack Obama's office before shipping out to Iraq. Sen. Obama not only opposes the war, he has tried to distinguish himself in the Democratic field by stressing that he alone among the major candidates opposed it from the outset. And Lt. Lippert, 34 years old, has helped hone those views, particularly on a pullout of American troops, even as he prepared to go to war. Since being called up for active duty and going on the Navy payroll, Lt. Lippert won't talk about his views on the war. "Now isn't the time for me to debate Iraq policy," Lt. Lippert says in an interview. "My job is to serve my country and to execute the decision of the commander-in-chief." However, friends say that Lt. Lippert, from a family with a long military history, joined the Navy Reserve in 2005 even though he knew the deteriorating situation in Iraq meant the odds of fighting in the war were high. "Mark knew that he probably would be called to active duty," says his fiancée, Robyn Schmidek. "It's not the war he would have scripted, but he felt a higher calling to support the troops." The deployment of Lt. Lippert -- who will be gone for about six months -- means a hole in Sen. Obama's foreign-policy team at a perilous point for the candidate. Sen. Obama is under sharpening attack by opponents and critics who say he lacks the experience in national-security affairs to lead the country in a time of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a global fight with Islamic extremists. It also means worrying about a friend who's suddenly in harm's way. Over the past two years, Sen. Obama and Lt. Lippert have traveled around the globe together, played one-on-one basketball and shared each other's shoes. Lt. Lippert has continuing email exchanges with the senator's half sister in Africa. Sen. Obama encouraged Lt. Lippert to get engaged. Sen. Obama calls Lt. Lippert, "one of my favorite people in the world." Says former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, an Obama adviser, "The two men are experiencing what it means to have someone dear to you go to war." The war has touched others on the campaign trail and in Washington. Republican candidate Sen. John McCain has a son deployed in Iraq. At the end of June, when Lt. Lippert went to Norfolk, Va., for processing, he met Sonja Maria Miller, an aide to First Lady Laura Bush who was also activated as a Navy reservist. Here at the Coronado base, a vast naval complex where Navy SEALs train, Lt. Lippert is routinely asked by other sailors about his civilian job. At first, he says, he tried to answer that he worked in the Senate on foreign relations. Some Navy officers pressed: for which senator? Lt. Lippert, trying to play down his role with the presidential candidate, answered, "Barack Obama." Lt. Lippert braced for some military personnel to debate the war once they found out he worked for Sen. Obama, but that hasn't happened. Instead, he says some sailors seem impressed that he is working for a politician whose name they recognize. * * * Lt. Lippert grew up in Cincinnati and played basketball, baseball and football. Many of his mother's relatives served in the military; an uncle, also named Mark, served for 20 years. James Lippert, Lt. Lippert's father and a lawyer, received a deferment during the Vietnam War. But he says, "I've talked to Mark that I truly regret not serving my country. I had some of my best friends killed in Vietnam." [photo] Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama catches up with his chief foreign-policy staffer, Mark Lippert, who's about to be deployed to Iraq. As a teenager, Lt. Lippert dreamed of becoming an intelligence officer like the fictional Jack Ryan in the movie, "The Hunt for Red October." While obtaining a political-science degree at Stanford University, he considered Officer Candidate School, but instead stayed at Stanford for a graduate degree in international relations. He then went to Washington seeking a foreign-policy job. After a stint at the State Department, he worked for Democratic Sens. Diane Feinstein and Tom Daschle, before joining the foreign-operations panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee -- rising fast based on his smarts and ability to forge strong relationships with Capitol Hill staff on both sides of the aisle. Lt. Lippert said he felt an urge to join the armed forces as the U.S. undertook more military actions following the Sept. 11 tragedy. He got the lengthy application in 2004, labored over it for months and finally applied to be a Navy reservist. In January 2005, he was commissioned. He began working one weekend each month at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland, Md. Around the same time, Sen. Obama, newly elected from Illinois, joined the Foreign Relations Committee, a perfect perch for a politician with presidential aspirations to burnish his foreign-policy credentials and speak about international hot spots. He asked his new chief of staff, Pete Rouse, who had run U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office before his 2004 defeat, for recommendations of a foreign-policy aide. Mr. Rouse had worked with Lt. Lippert and suggested him, among others. Lt. Lippert saw a brand new senator with little traditional foreign-policy experience. Still, "I could tell Barack loved foreign policy," Lt. Lippert says. As the two men began to travel the world on Senate business, their personal ties began to grow. Tall and solidly built, Lt. Lippert is laid back and jovial, at ease joking with Sen. Obama between meetings or riding in the car with him during a "smoke" (before the senator quit recently). They also have intense bursts of serious conversation, debating what are considered realistic timetables to secure nuclear material around the world. In September 2005, the two men traveled to Russia on a weapons-inspection trip. They arrived hours early in Moscow and wanted to work out. When the senator's luggage was delayed, he borrowed Lt. Lippert's size-13 sneakers, even though they were two sizes too large. After lifting weights at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Lt. Lippert recalls, Sen. Obama said, "Let's play one-on-one." The men played an intense game until they quit, sweating, with Sen. Obama the winner. "Barack has better moves and longer arms," says Lt. Lippert. Sen. Obama's take: "Excuses." In January 2006, Sen. Obama, as part of a congressional delegation, visited Iraq, where he bunked with Lt. Lippert in the old pool house of Saddam Hussein. A year into his reserve training, Lt. Lippert was gaining more insight into the military, a development that Sen. Obama valued. In Fallujah, while Sen. Obama met with one military official, Lt. Lippert stepped off to the side for a conversation with a Marine colonel. When Sen. Obama caught back up with him, he asked Lt. Lippert, "What did he say we should do to turn this situation around?" Lt. Lippert replied, "Leave." The trip, Lt. Lippert says, helped strengthen Sen. Obama's growing belief that the U.S. needed to start bringing its troops home. The two men grew closer when Sen. Obama set out in August 2006 for a trip to Kenya, his father's homeland. Lt. Lippert asked retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, who speaks Swahili, to join them. (Gen. Gration later signed on to advise the presidential campaign.) He arranged for Sen. Obama and his wife, Michelle, to get an HIV test, in an effort to publicize the problem of AIDS and promote testing, and arranged for Sen. Obama to go on live TV imploring Kenyans to root out corruption. As Sen. Obama has built his presidential campaign he has attracted members of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment, including Anthony Lake, President Clinton's former national security advisor, and former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Lt. Lippert's role is largely behind-the-scenes, working to refine Sen. Obama's own ideas and finding other experts for input. "I'm like a point guard," Lt. Lippert says. "Barack is about ideas and questions, and I don't have all the answers. He trusts me to pass the ball to others to give him points of view." Lt. Lippert's biggest influence may have been in focusing Sen. Obama to stress confronting "trans-national" threats that don't emanate from nation-states -- threats such as genocide and weapons of mass destruction. In April, Lt. Lippert helped draft the speech where the senator would lay out his foreign-policy goals as a presidential candidate. Largely ignoring old-line threats and institutions prominent since World War II, this speech laid out a "new vision of American leadership and a new conception of national security," Sen. Obama said. "Whether it's global terrorism or pandemic disease, dramatic climate change or the proliferation of weapons of mass annihilation, the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries." Sen. Obama has also called for a far more aggressive approach to diplomatic engagement around the world, including talks with Iran, Syria and North Korea and an easing of the travel ban with Cuba. Hillary Clinton harshly attacked Sen. Obama after one debate, calling his suggestion that he would meet with the leaders of hostile countries weak and naïve -- a line of attack that others are sure to emulate. "I honestly feel the senator is not nearly ready for prime time" on foreign policy, says Douglas MacKinnon, former adviser to Sen. Bob Dole. Sen. Obama "has lived foreign policy," says Lt. Lippert. With a Kenyan father, an American mother and a childhood spent in Indonesia, "Barack has a unique and deep-rooted understanding of the world and the U.S. place in it." Adds Samantha Power, a Harvard professor and Pulitzer-Prize winning author who advises the Obama campaign, "Obama has plenty of people rounding out his foreign-policy circle, but ultimately he wants 21st century, not conventional, ideas." * * * At the start of this year, as the need for fresh troops intensified, Lt. Lippert sensed his time to get in the war was approaching -- just as Sen. Obama announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. "I want to get called up," he told Ms. Schmidek, his fiancée. "I don't just want to drill on the weekends. I want to make a difference right away. It will be fine with me if I go to Iraq." In June, Lt. Lippert received word that he was being activated and had to report to duty. He reached Sen. Obama on his cellphone in Chicago. "Hey, I got mobilized," he recalls saying. "It's definitely happening." "I'm worried about you," Sen. Obama replied. "I want you to be safe." But Lt. Lippert still worried about his job. "The timing isn't great." "I don't care about that," Sen. Obama said, according to both men. "Don't worry about us. Just get back here in one piece." Lt. Lippert helped enlist Denis McDonough, onetime foreign-policy adviser to former Sen. Daschle, to take over his role. Over the past three months, while preparing to be deployed, Lt. Lippert has remained in touch with his office. From his bachelor-officer housing, he has been briefing his successor by email and cellphone. Recently, the campaign sent him a terrorism speech that Sen. Obama was set to deliver; on another night, it was an op-ed column on Cuba. But Lt. Lippert says he has ignored much of the campaign material sent to him because of his current mission. He also says he's just too busy -- drilling with an M-4 and full suit of body armor in the California desert, and learning wartime intelligence-gathering techniques. Recently, Lt. Lippert fulfilled his final training: Dropped into a simulated operations center to provide intelligence to a SEAL team in a fake Iraqi village, complete with coyotes and scorpions and fake insurgents. Lt. Lippert says he is looking forward to coming back in several months, rejoining the Obama campaign and getting married to his fiancée. "When you're going off to Iraq, your horizons become more short term," he says. Earlier this week, he returned home to Washington for a few days. Sen. Obama, on the way to the gym, spotted Lt. Lippert on the street near the Capitol. "Come work out with me," he yelled. Lt. Lippert said he'd stop by the office that afternoon. When they met, Sen. Obama and Lt. Lippert embraced. "I think I've gained weight during training," Lt. Lippert complained. Within minutes, the two men had shut out the rest of the bustling Senate office. They sat in a corner and whispered, sharing deep-throated chuckles and gossip. When Sen. Obama's secretary tells him -- for the third time -- that he has to go to a meeting, the men are momentarily silent, then stone-faced. "Be careful over there," Sen. Obama says. Lt. Lippert replies, "Don't worry." Sen. Obama adds: "I need you back here." Write to Monica Langley at monica.langley@wsj.com
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This is on Drudge today. HOW OBAMA SLIPPED OUT OF COUNTRY Sat Jul 19 2008 17:02:39 ET Pool Report The motorcade left Sen. Obama’s home in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood at 11:11 a.m. There was one Chicago Police Department patrol car, followed by two SUVs, a sedan and a press van. Riding in the press van were agent Jill, Sam, John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune and Glen Johnson of The Associated Press. The motorcade headed north on Lake Shore Drive to I-55 (Stevenson Expressway) and toward MDW. The CPD blocked traffic for our turn onto the western perimeter of the airfield, where we arrived at 11:31 a.m. Waiting on the tarmac was a Gulfstream III (G3) executive jet (tail number N366JA). We exited our respective vehicles at 11:34 a.m. The crew was waiting outside for the senator’s arrival and a few photos with him near a wing. He was wearing tan slacks and a short black jacket. After fishing around in the back of one of the SUVs for his luggage (he seemed especially to be checking his suits inside a garment bag), he was on the bird by 11:36 a.m. Also getting on the plane were eight Secret Service agents and the two reporters. The senator briefly greeted us as we walked past his seat in the forward section. Seated near him was senior spokeswoman Linda Douglass, the only staff member on the flight. After everyone found a seat on the crowded plane, the pilot announced that the flying time would be between 80 and 85 minutes. All seemed eager for him to start the engines, since the plane had been sitting under a hot sun and the cabin temperature was likely somewhere in the 90s. Sweat had begun to roll down the faces of some of the agents. “We’re just easing you into it,” Obama told his bodyguards, referring to the heat and the desert weather they would all be traveling to in the coming days. As the plane taxied, the senat or, wearing a short-sleeve black shirt, chatted with Douglass. The plane was wheels up at 11:55 a.m. Your pool asked Douglass if we could chat with the senator about his upcoming trip. She said she would check, but later told us that we would only get a brief chance to ask him a couple questions once at Reagan National Airport. Janis, our stewardess, first served the senator his lunch (chicken and rice and broccoli). Everyone else had sandwiches, wraps, chips and candy (yes, just like on the bus), although we were served on china and given green place settings and cloth napkins. As the plane peaked around 41,000 feet and 500 knots, according to the computer screen tracking our location at the front of the cabin, the senator read a copy of the Wall20Street Journal. Johnson had claimed an aisle seat and reported that he first read a story about off-shore oil drilling and then one about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. By the time we were descending, at 17,000 feet, he had switched to the New York Times, spending most of his time in the Sports and Arts sections. We were wheels down at 2:17 p.m. local and parked with the engines off by 2:24 p.m. After getting off the plane, Douglass said there was time for “one question,” adding, “Then, we’re making him leave. He’s behind [schedule].” Your pool, with the noise of the jet’s engines in the background, quickly asked what two or three things Obama was hoping to learn on this mission. “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is,” he said. “I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense, both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what the most, ah, their biggest concerns are. And I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they’ve been doing.” Then, the senator was asked whether he plans to deliver some tough talk to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about doing more to stand up the instruments of self-governance in their own nations. “Well, you know, I’m more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking,” he said. “And I think it is very important to recognize that I’m going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time, so it’s the president’s job to deliver those messages.” By 2:32 p.m., the motorcade was rolling. This one included two local police cars, three SUVs, a Honda Accord, a minivan equipped with lights and sirens and another local patrol car. We were off the DCA property by 2:36 p.m. Your pool was in the Honda with Douglass. It was driven by Molly Buford, who works in Obama’s senator office and also for the campaign. The mot orcade traveled I-395 to I-295 and then on to the Suitland Parkway, entering a northern entrance of Andrews Air Force Base at 2:57 p.m. We passed several military helicopters and planes before arriving at 3:01 p.m. near an aircraft that had no markings, with the exception of an American flag on the tail. This was the plane that would transport the congressional delegation to their destination. A ground crew member told us it was a Boeing C-40C. The senator greeted several military personnel waiting for him near the plane. He was carrying a laptop bag and had changed into some brown leather boots upon arrival in Washington. The senator was also greeted by Mark Lippert, foreign policy advisor in his senate office. Douglass said he was the only member of Ob ama’s staff traveling with him on the congressional delegation trip. Douglass later told your pool that Lippert had returned in the late spring from a tour of duty in Iraq as a naval reservist. By 3:03 p.m., the senator was on the aircraft, having been saluted by a member of the military on his way aboard. At 3:09 p.m., the plane’s door was closed. Four minutes later it was in motion and wheels up at 3:17 p.m., taking off to the south. Later, Douglass confirmed that Sens. Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel were on the plane before our arrival. Your pool had not seen them at Andrews. -- John McCormick, Chicago Tribune.
So who is this Lippert guy. I think we will be hearing more of him in the future. The above article says he was going to Iraq. Now he is back less then a year later. I wonder why. I may have to go dig that up.
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