A few points:

• Lieutenants command platoons. Captains command companies.
• The U.S. Army would not, under any circumstance, split up a rifle platoon and ship half of them to Iraq and the other half to Afghanistan. They train to work as a team. This simply would not occur, ever.
• There has never been a shortage of weapons or ammunition for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. On occasion, American forces (especially Special Forces) have used Soviet weapon designs, but they have done so by choice, not necessity.

In the clip above, everything Barack Obama said was a lie… probably including the part where he said he spoke with an Army Captain (has anyone checked to seek if Deval Patrick spoke with Jesse McBeth?).

This leaves us with two possibilities.

Barack Obama is a liar. He (or someone he plagiarized) simply made the tale up out of the whole cloth.

Barack Obama is a rube. Anyone with any sense of how the military works at all would immediately sniff this out as a series of false stories. Perhaps Barack Obama, the man who would be Commander in Cheif, is so ignorant of all matters military that he could be easily fooled by a fraud.

Neither possibility says anything good about Obama.

Update: Over at ABC News Blog , Political Punch, Jake Tapper gets in touch with the officer in question and states that Obama’s claim was therefore true.

Uh, no.

Obama claimed:

“You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon,” he said. “Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”

The captain confirmed that he was then a lieutenant when he took command of a rifle platoon of 39 men, and that 15 men that platoon were assigned to other units. While many of them ended up being deployed to Iraq as part of other units, that does not equate Obama’s assertion that the unit was divided.

We then find out that when this officer “didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough humvees,” he was referring to practice ammunition for two kinds of heavy weapons while in Fort Drum, New York.

As for having to capture Taliban weapons he stated, “The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons,” he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or “Dishka”) on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.”

Obama’s most crucial, explosive claim, that “: They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief” remains utterly and completely false.

And that part, it seems, he made up by himself

1) Obama is not a Muslim. But he continues to insist he never was. This is a plain lie. Why he makes it, remains beyond us.

2) He claims no relationship to Islam. Utter lie. A majority of his brothers and sisters, and other relatives are Muslim.

3) Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war, while laudable in hindsight made little sense in 2002, except when his family, ethnic, and religious identity enter the equation.

5) Obama consistently downplays his relationship with Jeremiah Wright.

6) Lies about Wright’s personal influence.

7) Lies about his involvement with Wright’s politics, and the politics of Wright’s Church.

Obama forces Jeremiah Wright to dissimulate about the nature of his church, his and their views, opinions, and achievements.

9) Obama dissimulates on Wright’s past association with Farrakhan.

10) Obama employs Nation of Islam, in the past and present. Lets them go untouched, which

11) Raises concerns about Obama’s own stance on the Nation of Islam.

12) Obama dissimulates about his former take on Israel, and the Palestinians, putting in question his present stance.

13) Obama misrepresents his background, and the context from which he hails, for political purposes.

14) his books are fraught with lies about himself.

15) Obama’s campaign deliberately exploits his racial identity, to shield their candidate from regular media grilling.

16) Obama has chosen a deliberate strategy of evasion and vagueness in tackling tough issues. He does not take a stand, and he wont.

17) Obama’s rise to prominence, in Chicago, is fraught with deus ex machine events, and strange circumstances.

18) Why Obama’s record in Chicago, has not received a proper vetting or review by the national media, is puzzling.

19) Obama entered Havard because his father was an Alumnus.

20) It is not clear when changed his name from Barry Soetoro, and why.

21) The Media refuse to ask him questions about all of the above. Why?

22) Obama is a pathological liar, hence so are the media. He is a phony, and the media are complicit in foisting him on the Democratic party.