LAS VEGAS - Rapid response is taking on new meaning in the 2008 presidential campaign.
    
Less than 24 hours after Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama mentioned how his uncle helped liberate the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two, Republicans were all over him — since it was the Soviets rather than the Americans who freed the camp.
    
The Obama camp owned up to the mistake, saying the Illinois senator meant to refer to Buchenwald, not Auschwitz.
 
The move by Obama to try to bring up military service came after likely Republican presidential rival John McCain blasted Obama for his lack of military service as the two candidates sparred over legislation to increase education benefits for veterans. Obama supports the measure and McCain does not.
    
At a Memorial Day event with veterans in New Mexico on Monday, Obama said he could not “know what it is to walk into battle” because he had not served in the military.
    
But he told of his grandfather’s service in World War Two and an uncle “who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps.”
    
The Republican National Committee fired off an e-mail calling that a “dubious claim” and pointing out that it was the Soviets, not the Americans, who liberated Auschwitz.
    
“So unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant.
    
The Obama campaign quickly put out a clarification. 

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-Photo credit: Reuters/Steve Marcus (Obama standing before the U.S. flag)