Obama: McCain Will
Use Racial Tactics

In a speech yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama said his opponent Sen. John McCain and his fellow Republicans will use scare tactics on voters to persuade them not to vote for him, including racial ones.

“So what (President Bush and McCain are) going to try to do is make you scared of me,” said the presumed Democratic presidential nominee to a crowd in Springfield, Mo., Wednesday, as reported by the Associated Press. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

It is extremely disgraceful that Obama would make a false claim that McCain and our own President would use racial fear during the campaign even though there has been no evidence of either one of them, or other elected Republican officials, of doing that.

And if they did do that, it would be all over the news and right here. Does anyone honestly think that McCain or Bush, or any other type of politician, would commit political suicide by even barely mentioning Obama’s mixed heritage as a reason for not voting for him?

And what’s hypocritical is that while Obama is allegedly saying that McCain will be using race to his own advantage, Obama is doing the same thing by saying these false allegations.

This is a disgusting display of dirty politics at one of its lowest forms. How can Obama even say such a thing and he does not even bat an eye when he’s doing the same thing himself?

The Times Observer has written many editorials and columns in defense of Obama when he has been racially attacked. So there is a good record of sticking up for him when it was just, however, this time there is no defense for him when he accuses our President and his fellow presumed presidential opponent of racial attacks while there is no proof of either of them doing so.

It’s common for politicians during an election to flip-flop on positions, to make false allegations against their political foes and use just about every clean and dirty trick in the book to win votes.

However, to actually accuse an opponent and the President of the United States of America of saying that they are going to use a person’s race against him is extremely low.

It makes one wonder why politicians even bother to make such repulsive, groundless statements to begin with, since they are usually called on them and shown them to be a lie or untrue. Perhaps they do it just to win over voters and make a grand impression on them and in this case, get a pity vote.

For someone who keeps saying that “change” is needed for D.C., Obama again shows that he’s acting like a typical politician out for votes and it would be hard for his supporters to refute his shameful attack on McCain and President Bush without real evidence of them using race against the Senator.

And what’s more important, how can Obama bridge the racial divide in this country when his false attacks like this further spread it?

NY Times Exposes Bush Administration, Networks’ Secret Shame

According to a New York Times investigative story, the Bush Administration had retired generals and other former military leaders try to sell the war as “analysts” to news networks during the buildup of the Iraq war and afterwards.

“Many analysts strongly denied that they had either been co-opted or had allowed outside business interests to affect their on-air comments, and some have used their platforms to criticize the conduct of the war,” The New York Times wrote on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon said it was laughable that they could make retired military men into puppets and that they only provided these men with factual information to give to the American public.

But The New York Times’ article painted a very different picture by using 8,000 pages of e-mails and other documents it had obtain after suing the Department of Defense. These materials contained Pentagon talking points operations, private meetings and trips to Iraq, among other places. According to these documents, the Pentagon referred to these analysts, some of whom were being paid a nice sum of money per interview by the news networks, as “message force multipliers.” This certainly doesn’t sound like a friendly term to refer to messengers of “factual information.”

In fact, some of these military men weren’t comfortable with the messages they were delivering, but didn’t say anything for fear of losing access to important briefing information.

And what is worse is that some of these networks, according to The New York Times, knew about the relationship between these military men and the government and didn’t report it to the viewers.

“…other analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq — a clear ethical violation for most news organizations,” according to The New York Times.

It was reported that some of the other networks didn’t know about the dubious relationships between their analysts and the Bush Administration.

But since The New York Times has let the cat out of the bag, hardly any of the networks reported their shame, according to a recent Editor & Publisher article.

The networks who did not know they were being shammed should get a small pass from criticism and should work harder to prevent any conflicts from happening. To the other networks that went along with this disgusting display of a huge lack of media ethics, shame on them. They failed in their job of being objective and truthful, and more importantly, being the watch dogs of the government.

There was no need to sell the idea to the American public that we needed to go into Iraq to find out what was going on after years of broken resolutions by Saddam Hussein, as it has been written before in The Times Observer.

And the Bush Administration isn’t the first one to use propaganda to push a war effort to the American people. However, it shouldn’t be an accepted practice by the American public. We deserve truth and accountability from our leaders, especially from our elected president.

Who Says There’s No Smoking Gun Between Saddam, al-Qaeda?

Many Democrats and liberals have been hell bent to say that President Bush lied about his alleged claims that former Iraqi President and dictator Saddam Hussein had connections with terrorist group al-Qaeda may want to take a peek at a recently released report.

“The Iraqi Perspectives Project Primary Source Materials for Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents,” was recently released and while it stated that there were no direct links (or smoking gun) between Saddam and the terror group, which claims responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, there sure does seem to be enough dots to show that the bloody dictator had Sunday Tea with a few members of al-Qaeda.

For example, it has been known for a long time, and this report mentions it, that Saddam had a long relationship with terrorist organizations and supplied them with training grounds, funds and equipment. What many Bush critics don’t want to acknowledge is that al-Qaeda and Iraq’s former dictator had common objectives and a limited working relationship.

“At times, these organizations (Saddam’s security organizations and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network) would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust,” stated on page 559 of the report.

And then there is the liaison with Ayman al-Zawahiri, prominent leader of al-Qaeda and leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

“Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al-Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives,” stated on page 62 of the report.

So, just using those two passages alone, the report does state that there was a strong link to Saddam and al-Qaeda. Granted, no one is saying that Saddam had bin Laden over for poker night but there was a type of link there. And that is just al-Qaeda.

At the moment, there is no proof that both parties worked on the 9/11 attacks and President Bush never stated such a thing. But the fact that Saddam Hussein was a loose cannon who already had an established history of lying to the U.N. and breaking resolutions, among other things, America could not stand quietly by, waiting to be attacked again.

Going into Iraq to determine if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was the right course of action. Taking military action so soon after U.N. weapons inspectors went in there is up for debate, as mentioned before in The Times Observer.

But the job of any American president is to protect the people and to ensure their safety. And that is what the president was doing. We may not agree with how President Bush went about it but it was something that had to be done to finally determine how much of a threat Saddam actually posed to America.

To read the complete report, please click here.

Rather Refuses To Go Quietly Into That Good Night

Legendary CBS anchor Dan Rather has accused his former bosses of hiding documents that would show that his former network sacrificed him to appease the Bush Administration over alleged memos that question the president’s National Guard conduct.

Now Rather is suing CBS for a cool $70 million and he also claims the network is intentionally keeping the trial out of the public eye. Well, duh. Of course they are and you don’t need a long career in journalism to figure that out.

To recap what happened, in my little opinion, that forced The Dan into an early retirement is simple: Former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett gave four memos to CBS in late August of 2004 that claimed that President Bush’s former senior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian, criticized the president’s service in the National Guard in 1972.

After CBS aired the story in early September of 2004, there were many accusations against the network and Rather of sloppy journalism and that the memos were fakes. Now initially, I supported Rather. My knee-jerk reaction was that even the best reporters get hoodwinked every once in awhile. But I had the good common sense to at least dig into some of these accusations against The Dan and discover why so many people were up in arms.

It turns out that the forensic document experts, including Marcel Matley who was interviewed by the network, that CBS used stated that they had problems with the memos because they were copies and not the originals, which makes it hard to determine how authentic they are. Something that CBS and Rather forgot to report. Other document experts interviewed by the media stated the memos were actually created on a computer and not a typewriter from the 1970s.

And that’s where my support ended, along with many other journalists’. And thank goodness for the power of the blog or this little story would still been considered true.

And what gets me is that Rather could have covered himself by saying that experts questioned the validity of the memos by Killian. It’s Journalism 101 folks: You report both sides of the story and let the people decide. And if The Dan did that, he would still be working today, in my humble, little opinion.

Now Rather is making an idiot of himself by suing CBS and saying the network is hiding documents that can clear his name. Sure, he was hell bent that the initial story and even the memos were true, but Rather himself was the one who said that he had no confidence in the memos. And never mind the fact that Burkett has a proven history of lying about President Bush’s service. And because Burkett lied about the memos and how he got them, it makes me question Rather’s journalistic integrity if he still believes in the story and the memos.

Rather is just embarrassing himself by trying to make this an issue when he and CBS were clearly in the wrong about this story. He should be enjoying retirement as much as he can and not make a spectacle of himself.

It’s time to say “Good Night,” Dan.

New Information On Iraqi Death Study Met With Silence

Remember that 2006 study published by the British medical journal Lancet that stated that 654,965 Iraqi citizens have died since the U.S.-lead war started? Remember the huge hostile response it got from anti-war critics and the massive media coverage it generated?

So where is that now, when it turns out that shoddy data collection and bias created this infamous report?

Many critics of the study have attacked the unknown methods used to determine the Iraqi dead, according to a recent National Journal article. For a long time now researchers have questioned just how accurate the method of collecting the information really is and a few have pondered if the study was faked. These legitimate arguments and concerns can be found throughout the National Journal article and the blogosphere.

But what is really compelling is how many of the media, especially the anti-war crowd, has used the nearly 655,000 deaths as the gospel truth and how many non-media groups have been using the lost Iraqis as a soapbox for their own agendas.

Now, common sense says that if 654,965 was the actual number of Iraqis killed since the start of the war and not a reflection of the survey the authors did for the study, then we would have heard holy hell from these groups a long time ago. Just think: If at least 655,000 Iraqis died from 2003 to 2006, that means more then 18,000 innocent Iraqi citizens would have died every month for three years!

And after two months of war, no one even mentions that more than 36,000 people have been killed? It seems hard to believe that after the numerous protest marches during the first year of the war that no one mentioned or reported this horrific death toll until the study was published in 2006.

Even Iraq Body Count, which has opposed the war, has problems with the figure that study authors came up with. The group has said at the time of the release of the study that 45,000 Iraqis have died. And the group actually gets that number from calling morgues, cross-checking facts from media reports, as opposed to going into a few neighborhoods that have a strong anti-American bias or stuffing $20,000 down their money belt and shoes, as the National Journal reported that study authors actually did.

But while many Bush critics have accused the president of lying about the reasons for getting into the war and how they want truth and honesty from the Commander and Chief, these same people either don’t know or don’t care about the bias in this study.

For example, while the authors of the study states: “We declare that we have no conflict of interest,” they fail to mention that anti-Bush critic George Soros’ Open Society Institute helped fund the study, as reported the National Journal. In addition, the publication reported that one of the authors of the controversial study, Les Roberts, ran as a Democrat for the U.S. House of Representatives seat of the 24th Congressional District in New York and has stated he was against the Iraq war.

So, let’s put a little spin on this. Let’s say that Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton partly funded a study that said only 200 Iraqi citizens have died because of the war and that one of the authors ran for office as a Republican and was a supporter of the war. Hollywood actor Sean Penn and every other critic of the war would be screaming bloody murder about this and so would I. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the media would take a renewed interest on this subject.

But instead, we only have silence from those who gave such grand attention to this study that caught the world’s keen interest. Whether nearly 655,000 or 45,000 Iraqis were killed, either number is far too high and shows what the insurgents and terrorists are capable of. But let’s add two more casualties to the list: Objectivity and fairness.

A Funny Thing Happened At Bill Maher’s Forum

If Bill Maher isn’t going to take any bull from an elected official, he sure as hell isn’t going to take it from 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

This past Friday on his HBO show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” 9/11 conspiracy theorists from the studio audience interrupted the program by shouting that Maher should talk about the “truth” of what really happened on 9/11. Using colorful metaphors, Maher went down to the audience and helped kick these nutty jokers out. And it’s gotten quite a bit of hits on YouTube.

Now, these people are more out of it then your normal, run of the mill conspiracy theorist. But on second thought, maybe not. These people believe that either President Bush, the U.S. government or the evil “establishment,” according to some the “establishment” and the government are two separate beings, planned the 9/11 attacks.

These “9/11 Truthers,” as they call themselves, also claim everything from that there were no hijackers aboard the planes to that a missile really hit the Pentagon. And trust me there is a whole smorgasbord of other things that these yahoos claim but who has the time to name and debunk them all? Well, thank goodness Popular Mechanics has already done that for us.

But there are little things that really fly in the face of these anti-government crusaders and they’re called facts. As my father likes to say, a little common sense goes a long way. For example, the theory that there were no hijackers on the planes. It’s really funny, because there are many things that contradict this claim. There are cockpit recordings of the hijackers and cell phone recordings of the passengers telling their loved ones or 911 operators that radical Muslim terrorists have taken over the planes.

Or the little theory that a missile really hit the Pentagon. It’s a really interesting theory and it would make a great suspense movie, except for that pesky little fact that hundreds of eyewitnesses saw American Airlines Flight 77 slam into the United States Department of Defense building.

But if you present the 9/11 Truthers with these facts, or even mention that they should talked to the family and friends of the nearly 3,000 victims who died that fateful day, expect to be called a government shill or a sheep that should stop watching FOX News or any other news organization, even if it’s a liberal one.

Sadly, these people have no credibility. They don’t even have one government official who can back up even one of their absurd claims. At least the Roswell UFO conspiracy theorists can whip out retired government officials who claim to either have seen the alien craft or its pilots, such as Air Force Major Jesse Marcel or Elias Benjamin, an MP with the 390th Air Service Squadron.

With 9/11 Truthers though, what they say is an insult to what really happened that day and to the victims’ family and friends who suffered a great loss.

Bush Is Riding High After Iraq Report

Democrats, especially those running for the White House, will have a hard time selling their agenda that President Bush isn’t doing a good job in Iraq.

Just this past week Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told Congress that the President’s troop increased had a huge positive effect in Iraq: Sectarian killings are down more than 50 percent in Iraq and more than 80 percent in Baghdad, as reported by CNN.

And if that isn’t enough to get the Democrats, and the few Republicans who are against the war, red in the face, President Bush announced Thursday evening that he will take Petraeus’ recommendations and start troop reductions in December of this year.

So, what did we learn? Well, despite the number of Bush critics who say the president is too stubborn to listen to anyone; his stubbornness seems to have paid off.

But more importantly, the president didn’t bend to political pressure or drastic drops in the polls. He did what any good Commander-In-Chief does: Listen to those who know war best.

He took Petraeus’ recommendations and said that he would proceed with more troop reductions if things continue to go well in Iraq. While the war in Iraq is very unpopular with many Americans and with many whole-heartedly disagreeing with the president’s stance on the war, Bush is standing his ground.

While this is a victory for Bush at the moment and a huge blow to Democratic presidential candidates, it’s not wise to get hopes up. Anything can happen between now and December or later on.

The best thing we can hope for is that the Iraqi government and people can come together and continue to build their new way of life without the military assistance of the U.S. Once that is established, as well as major reduction in terrorists/insurgent activity, then we can celebrate. Because the war in Iraq isn’t over by a long shot.

Bush Creating ‘Islamophobia’?

According to Parvez Ahmed, who spoke to CAIR symposium at the National Press Club, the Bush Administration is creating a fear against of Islam and terrorism is too small to even bother with.

“Terrorism is a tactic. You cannot eradicate it by declaring a war against it. The war on terror is causing us infinitely more harm than the terrorists could have ever imagined,” said Ahmed, a chairman of the national board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as reported in The Washington Times yesterday.

President Bush and his group are creating fear of Islam? It appears that Ahmed is giving too much credit to Bush and taking away credit from the terrorists who have killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that fateful day.

Ahmed would have far more credibility if he actually criticized the number of people locked up for plotting terror attacks, such as Assem Hammoud. In July of 2006, law enforcement officials said that Hammoud was allegedly plotting to blow up the New York City train tunnels to flood the financial district.

Or maybe Ahmed should have blamed the six radical Islamists for spreading fear of his religion for their alleged plan to attack Fort Dix.

Better yet, maybe the chairman would like to speak with Narseal Batiste, who law enforcement officials claimed that he was allegedly creating an Islamic army to blow up the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building and a number of other buildings.

Hopefully, many have noticed that these plots and others have been foiled by what Ahmed so wisely stated as the president’s useless fight against terrorists.

Ahmed told his audience that it was important to keep in mind “that terrorists cannot destroy America.” But it’s not because of their lack of trying.

When a terrorist group of Islamic extremists have numerously called for a jihad against America and other countries and are actively plotting to kill as many innocent people as possible, that is not fear created by President Bush but the horrific reality of the enemy we are facing.

What’s The Point Of The Timetable Bill?

I’m sorry but I just don’t get what the House and the Senate have done. As we all know, today the Senate rebelliously passed a bill calling for U.S. combat forces to withdraw from Iraq next year.

Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus and other senior defense officials went to Capital Hill on the day the House voted on the bill to tell legislators to reconsider the timetable, saying that progress is being made but it will take time. And let’s not forget what many have been saying for a long time now: A withdraw will give the insurgents enough time to regroup and wait for the pullout and then take over Iraq in a bloody battle. And let’s not forget that we will be giving al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups a victory that will inspire them to continue their bloody Jihad against the world.

And the president has already said he will veto the bill, so what is the point of acting defiant? To send a message to the president, America and the world that they want the troops home? Big hairy deal, for years now Democrats and few Republicans have called for troop withdraw. They don’t need a bill to make that point. It’s time to stop playing politics with our troops lives and the safety of this nation and others.

But the Democrats, sadly, have made a good point as to why President Bush won in the last election. They are not showing the foresight that is needed to deal with terrorists and the safety of this country. What do they expect to happen if there is a timetable that would withdraw our troops before Iraq is ready to deal with the insurgents and terrorists? How will this affect the U.S. and Iraq and the rest of the world if Iraq is taken over by people who have vowed to kill those who do not share their views?

Because they are not asking these questions or listening to the consequences that military experts are warning of, they are not showing the interests of this country or Iraq but they are showing a way for them to win the White House in 2008.

And within those four years in office, how will that Democratic president explain to America that we need to go back into Iraq and deal with a war machine bent on supporting terrorism and destroying lives? How will that president, who voted for this bill, look Americans in the eye and tell us that it will be a harder, bloodier war because the enemy had years of preparation, planning and support? And what kind of answer will this future Democratic president give when someone asks: Why didn’t you want to deal with this when it was far more manageable than it is now?

And if it doesn’t seem manageable now, wait until the insurgents take over Iraq, and they provide funds for terrorist black markets, training grounds and attacks. And while this is only speculation but a good educated guess by what has been reported on, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will get the nuclear weapons/components he is seeking, as a payback for funding the insurgents. (Let’s not forget that there is strong evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had sent his WMDs to Syria long before the war started. An insurgent-controlled Iraq in four years will certainly have them shipped back.)

It’s not a pretty picture and it’s far from being finished but it is something that supporters of the bill fail to see or consider. Is it a possible scenario? After the 9/11 attacks, we simply can’t afford to see the glass as half full when innocent lives are on the line.

Impeaching Bush For WMD Misleading?

More than 30 Vermont towns the other day voted to have President Bush impeached because, besides other things, he allegedly misled the country and the world about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, according to a Reuter’s article, published Wednesday, March 7, 2007.

Apparently, this is nothing new. Vermont holds an annual, colonial-era meeting to talk about all types of issues. And it’s also nothing new that a few towns in Vermont had similar resolutions of impeaching the president last year. And let’s face it, nothing is going to happen.

One of the biggest things that many Bush critics love to throw around is that he lied to Americans about Saddam’s WMDs. But if one has really paid attention to the lead up to the war, the real question that should be asked is this: If Bush lied about a dictator’s weapons; does that mean that all of Congress, including other global governments and organizations lied as well?

What many do not know, and a good many Bush critics do not want to acknowledge, is that it just wasn’t our own government who made these claims against Saddam. We had intelligence information from European and Middle Eastern countries, as well as the United Nations, and it came down to the same thing: Saddam had WMDs.

Our Congress saw this information, and just like Bush, they came to the same conclusions as the president: Saddam had these weapons as well. In fact, many Web sites love to feature quotes from politicians who at the time said that Saddam is a threat. Now, many of them are singing a different tune.

But the fact remains that many different governments had the same information. So, did they lie as well? Not likely. Let’s take a brief trip down memory lane. In 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox because Saddam was not following the resolutions placed by him by the U.N. In fact, he was making things difficult for the weapons inspectors by not complying with them. The operation was to destroy known plants, factories and holding areas of these weapons.

When the operation was over, the U. N. asked Saddam if they could go in and see if the operation was a success. Saddam said no and they walked away with their tails between their legs. Never mind the fact that they had resolutions that allowed them to go in and check things out. And never mind the fact that no one blasts the U.N. for not enforcing its own resolutions against a man who had a huge history of lying about his weapons.

So, after 9/11, it was only natural to find out once and for all if Saddam had these weapons. Plus, there was so much intelligence information from different, global sources saying that Saddam never got rid of these weapons, that that was enough to warrant a search. And once the weapons inspectors were back in Iraq, Saddam gave them the same runaround as last time. But that’s where I have to part ways with the President’s plan.

There was nothing wrong with sending the U.N. in there and finding out what Saddam actually had. I always felt they should have had at least a year of searching before military action was even considered, much less acted on.

But let’s look at what has been found in Iraq. Granted, the huge stock piles of WMDs were not there. There were rumors before the war that there were huge shipments to Syria and according to Saddam Hussein's No. 2 Air Force officer, Georges Sada, that actually happened. Again, something to consider.

What was discovered was that Saddam lied about having terrorists training camps and a huge black market for terrorists.

So, if the good people really want to impeach Bush for misleading the world about those weapons, they better impeach the world governments as well.