By Peggy Shapiro at American Thinker:

Barack Obama’s call to action is “Change we can believe in.” I would love to believe it, but until now I haven’t even been able to understand it. What is going to change?  With his latest about face on direct talks with Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Obama has finally clarified what he is going to change: his opinion. From terror to funding for tots, where there’s controversy and two sides to be wooed, there is the Obama about-face.
This week, Obama’s key foreign policy advisor, Susan E. Rice, told the New York Times that Obama never claimed he would be willing to meet “unconditionally” with Iran’s president  Mr. Ahmadinejad. Dr. Rice said that Obama would not meet at the presidential level with this Iran or any other so-called “rogue” state without the preparation to use such a meeting as leverage for change. In fact, it was only right-wing machinations or imagination that “distorted and reframed” Obama’s views.
That was certainly a change from numerous statements candidate Obama made on the same topic.  Did John McCain enter the following posting on Obama’s campaign website? “Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.”  
Nothing could have been clearer than Obama’s response to Anderson Cooper during the YouTube Continue Reading »

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Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has received an endorsement he might well wish he hadn’t — from the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas’ top political adviser in the Gaza Strip, delivered his endorsement in an interview with WorldNetDaily and WABC Radio in New York.

“We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections,” Yousuf said.

“I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principle. And he has a vision to change America, to [put] it in a position to lead the world community, but not with humiliation and arrogance.”

The U.S. and Israel have been seeking to isolate Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June and is classified by the State Department as a terrorist group.

Obama, as well as presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain, have all referred to Hamas as a “terrorist organization,” according to WorldNetDaily.

Asked about Obama’s criticism of former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas during his Middle Eastern trip, Yousuf said:

“I understand American politics and this is the season for elections and everybody tries to sound like he’s a friend of Israel…

“I hope Mr. Obama and the Democrats will change the political discourse when one of them will be the president.”

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By Benjamin Shapiro http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61117

Yesterday morning, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was busily installing 6,000 new centrifuges for development of nuclear material. Further, Ahmadinejad stated, Iran would begin testing a new type of centrifuge that works five times faster than ordinary centrifuges.

Yesterday afternoon, Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., declared that the U.S. should engage in a “diplomatic surge” in Iraq. In particular, he said, America should embrace talks with Iran. “I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that,” Obama told Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. “I continue to believe that the original decision to go into Iraq was a massive strategic blunder, that the two problems you pointed out – al-Qaida in Iraq and increased Iranian influence in the region – are a direct result of that original decision.”

Never mind the unbelievable arrogance of a foreign policy boob like Barack Obama lecturing the two most knowledgeable on-the-ground figures in Iraq on the best military strategy for Iraq.

Barack Obama’s scariest characteristic isn’t his ego, though its sheer size threatens to shift the globe out of orbit. Obama’s scariest characteristic is his Continue Reading »

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Washington Post

Sen. Barack Obama continued his criticism of U.S. national security policy Monday, calling for more resources in Afghanistan. His remarks fueled the continuing debate, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, over his foreign-policy views and political strategy.

Hardly anyone, however, questioned the premise of what he said, or saw his remarks as an insult to the U.S. Air Force. Yes, the chairman of the Republican National Committee demanded an apology — but no one from the Air Force did. So let me say it: The senator should be more careful with his facts and more skeptical of his assumptions.

Here’s what Obama said in Nashua, N.H., about Afghanistan: “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”

Leave aside the strategic implications of his comments. Is there a shred of evidence that airpower is either responsible for civilian deaths or is deadlier than ground operations?

I studied this issue earlier this year as a National Security and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard. I am also a long-time consultant to the Air Force and a veteran of civilian Continue Reading »

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Compares charter calling for murder of Jews to Declaration of Independence
By Aaron Klein

www.worldnetdaily.com

JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama’s Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group’s official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America’s Declaration of Independence.

The Hamas piece was published on the “Pastor’s Page” of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week.

Hamas, responsible for scores of shootings, suicide Continue Reading »

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From Urgent Agenda:

Ronald Reagan was sometimes called the Teflon president. No matter how much criticism he received, some said, he was able to wash it away quickly. Nothing stuck. Well, that’s not entirely true. Reagan went through the usual cycles of popularity, and, for a few moments in 1984, after a debate with Walter Mondale, it looked as if he could lose re-election. He didn’t.

Now we have a Teflon candidate in Barack Obama. No matter what criticism is directed at him, and it isn’t much, and no matter how many questions are asked - not much there either - he keeps rising in the polls. His campaign is being called a movement. The word campaign, some say, doesn’t quite describe it.

But a campaign cannot be a movement, not legitimately. It might grow out of a movement, of course. Reagan’s campaign grew directly from the rise of the conservative movement in America, which started in the 1950s. But Reagan never described his campaign for president in 1980 as a movement. He ran a traditional, within-the-party campaign. He became popular, but never developed the cult of personality that we see with Obama.

I’ve described the Obama campaign as frightening. It becomes more

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From Sun Times:

What would Barack Obama do? With a delegate lead putting him on track to win the Democratic presidential nomination and Republicans facing an uphill fight in November, what would the change Obama touts on the campaign trail mean were he to take over the White House? That question arises because of things he says as he politicks, including a couple of positions that have been undercut by his advisers.

A “NAFTA-gate” brouhaha erupted after Obama made protectionist-sounding remarks, saying he would reopen negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement to correct defects that have cost U.S. jobs. Then it was reported that an adviser, University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, told the Canadian consulate in Chicago that Obama’s remarks should be viewed more as “political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.” Obama said the discussion had been “misreported.”

Obama has a reputation of understanding the value of free trade, so the Canadian report seemed reassuring on the economic issue if not altogether flattering to him in regards to candor while wooing voters in Ohio. But Obama followed up by saying he would reopen NAFTA to “strengthen the core labor and environmental standards.”

Which position, free trade or more protectionism, would prevail in an Obama presidency?

Then another adviser raised questions about his pledge for a scheduled pullout of troops from Iraq. In a BBC interview, Samantha Power said Obama “will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan — an operational plan — that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president.”

That’s an imminently reasonable position, but at odds with Obama’s campaign rhetoric. He reacted by sticking to his position: “I will end it in 2009.” Democrats never tire of damning President Bush for ignoring military advice on Iraq, but their presidential candidates insist on retreating no matter what the generals say.

Faced with the realities of Iraq, what Continue Reading »

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From Huffinton Post: 

Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn’t because he possesses superior “judgment,” as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.

Would Obama have acted differently had he been in Washington or had he had the benefit of the arguments and the intelligence that the administration was offering to the Congress debating that resolution? During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: “There’s not much of a difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, “…on the merits I didn’t consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried.” And, in Continue Reading »

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Can Barack Obama, who campaigns as an icon of peace, actually be more bellicose than Bush? Yes, he can.

by Brendan O’Neill

Obama-mania is getting out of hand. Full-grown and well-educated men—from swooning Andrew Sullivan to the entire staff of GQ magazine—are developing “man crushes” on Barack Obama, going weak in the knees for his immaculately pressed suits, oratorical skills, and shameless hope-mongering.

“I’ve never wanted anyone more than I want you,” warbles Obama Girl in a song called “I Got a Crush on Obama,” which has been viewed over 6 million times on YouTube. Celebs are queuing up to fall at his feet. “My heart belongs to Barack,” says Scarlett Johansson. There’s a palpable whiff of semi-religious hysteria at Obama rallies. As Joel Stein wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Obamaphilia has gotten creepy,” and its “fanatical” adherents are starting to embarrass themselves.

Actually, it’s worse than that: they are deluding themselves. Many Democrats have become so goggle-eyed, so insanely convinced that Obama is the savior of American politics (potentially rescuing both the Democratic Party from political ruin and America herself from the decadence and violence of the Bush era), that they are beginning to suffer political hallucinations. They fantasize that he is pure and righteous, a miracle-worker who, in a pique of rage, will overturn the conventions of neocon-ruled America.

The blind hope in Obama-as-messiah is most clearly expressed in the widespread

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Clarice Feldman
Undoubtedly thrilled at Jay Rockefeller’s endorsement of him in which he referred to Obama as “brilliant”, Obama makes a major blunder. He praises Rockefeller for having done his homework and, unlike Hillary, voting against the authorization to use force in Iraq   .

Obama criticized Clinton expressly for failing to read the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons capabilities, a report available at the time of her October 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. “She didn’t give diplomacy a chance. And to this day, she won’t even admit that her vote was a mistake - or even that it was a vote for war,” Obama said.
“When it came time to make the most important foreign policy decision of our generation the decision to invade Iraq Senator Clinton got it wrong,” Obama said.
He said that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow Democrat from neighboring West Virginia, had read the intelligence estimate as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and had voted against the war resolution.
Rockefeller, who is now chairman of that committee, endorsed Obama on Friday and campaigned with him on Saturday.
Rockefeller called Obama “brilliant” and “well grounded” and prepared to take the reins as commander in chief.

As Hot Air notes, however, not only did Rockefeller Continue Reading »

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Found this article at: Obama ‘04: For Hitting Iran, Even Pakistan

Senator Obama is a flipflopper also…

By David Mendell, Tribune staff reporter

Obama would consider missile strikes on Iran
September 25, 2004

U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama suggested Friday that the United States one day might have to launch surgical missile strikes into Iran and Pakistan to keep extremists from getting control of nuclear bombs.

Obama, a Democratic state senator from the Hyde Park neighborhood, made the remarks during a meeting Friday with the Tribune editorial board. Obama’s Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, was invited to attend the same session but declined.

Iran announced on Tuesday that it has begun converting tons of uranium into gas, a crucial step in making fuel for a nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency has called for Iran to suspend all such activities.

Obama said the United States must first address Iran’s attempt to gain nuclear capabilities by going before the United Nations Security Council and lobbying the international community to apply more pressure on Iran to cease nuclear activities. That pressure should come in the form of economic sanctions, he said.

But if those measures fall short, the United States should not rule out military strikes to destroy nuclear production sites in Iran, Obama said.

“The big question is going to be, if Iran is

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Here is a video on Obama’s Iraq War stance. It is pretty long, but really good.
Made by http://www.youtube.com/user/JPatrick322

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American Thinker: 

Can you imagine the international outcry if a President of the United States went to the United Nations and demanded that a UN military force invade a hostile, sovereign country? Sure you can; we already lived through that over Iraq. Now imagine that President Bush had made the demand that our allies like Canada and Australia should invade, but not offer a single US infantry soldier beside them. Wouldn’t that be a bit embarrassing?

Then get ready for the foreign policy of an Obama Administration.
Of late, Obama has sung a decidedly noninterventionist tune. But it wasn’t always so. The senator sounded quite hawkish just a few years ago in 2005,when he urged military intervention in the Darfur conflict. Senator Obama coauthored an op-ed piece for the Washington Post  in which he lauded the Bush Administration for trying to end that conflict, a fight that has little to do with US national security. He urged an escalation, a surge if you will, of American diplomatic and military support to end the humanitarian crises created by ethnic-religious conflict. He wrote, “It has become clear that a U.N. - or NATO-led force is required” to end escalating violence in Sudan.However he did not say US forces should be in direct combat roles. So what exactly did he mean?
The Senator continued to push for stronger outside military involvement in the Sudan civil war in late 2006. He told the Chicago Sun-Times “my overarching sense is the great urgency to get a United Nations protective force on the ground.”
Again, this sounds like an interventionist policy.
Can that be right I wondered? Surely no reasonable Continue Reading »

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Michelle Obama’s comment that, for the first time in her adult life, she feels proud of America helps crystallize who Barack Obama is.

To be sure, the wife of a candidate is perfectly free to have views that are distinct from her husband’s. But on a matter that is so fundamental to one’s being as love of country, it is difficult to imagine that Michelle Obama would publicly twice make such a statement suggesting disdain for America unless she felt it comported with her husband’s views.

Equally important, her statement aligns perfectly with the hate-America views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s minister, friend, and sounding board for more than two decades. On the Sunday following 9/11, Wright characterized the terrorist attacks as a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later, Wright suggested that the attacks were retribution for America’s racism.

“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01,” Wright wrote in his church magazine Trumpet. “White America and the Western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”

Wright has been a key supporter of Louis Farrakhan, and in December, honored the Nation of Islam leader for lifetime achievement, saying he “truly epitomize[s] greatness.”

Farrakhan has repeatedly made hate-filled statements targeting Jews, whites, America, and homosexuals.

Those who think two of the closest people to Obama could publicly make anti-America statements unless Obama himself felt that way, are fooling themselves. To date, Obama has proven himself to be nothing more than a great orator, rendering the statements of those around him even more important in illuminating his true character and agenda. During his Senate career, he skipped 17 percent of the votes and sponsored only one bill that became law. That bill was to promote “relief, security, and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Bereft of official accomplishments, Obama has distinguished himself mainly by being against measures that protect American security, such as finishing the mission in Iraq. If we were to leave Iraq quickly, as Obama vows he would do, it would become a launch pad for al-Qaida attacks on the U.S.

Obama avoided voting on extending the Protect America Act, thus putting America at risk when immediate interception of terrorist communications is required. Last August, Obama voted against a measure that would have allowed the U.S. to continue to monitor overseas conversations of terrorists like Osama bin Laden without first obtaining a warrant.

If his radical vote had prevailed, bin Laden would have been given the same rights as Americans.

To this day, Obama has not distanced himself from Continue Reading »

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This article was written in January.  Taken from The Fact Hub. 

– 

This morning, Sen. Barack Obama claimed that President Clinton “made several misleading statements about my record” on Iraq. Actually, everything President Clinton said was true:

It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he has been against the war every year, enumerating the years, and never got asked one time — not once — well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn’t know how you would have voted on the resolution, you said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war, and you took that speech you’re now running on off your Web site in 2004, and there is no difference in your voting record and Hillary’s ever since.

In 2004, Sen. Obama said he didn’t know how he would have voted on the Iraq War resolution.

‘When asked about Senators Kerry and Edwards’ votes on the Iraq war, Obama said, “I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘What would I have done? I don’t know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.’

In 2004, Sen. Obama also said there was little difference between his position and George Bush’s position on Iraq:

In a meeting with Chicago Tribune reporters at the Democratic National Convention, Obama said, “On Iraq, on paper, there’s not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago. […] There’s not much of a difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” [Chicago Tribune, 07/27/04]

While running for Senate, Sen. Obama acknowledged that he took his anti-war speech off his campaign website, calling it “dated”:

Specifically, State Senator Obama maintains that an October 2002 anti-war speech was removed from his campaign web site because “the speech was dated once the formal phase of the war was over, and my staff’s desire to continually provide fresh news clips.”

Finally, Sen. Obama and Hillary have almost identical voting records on Iraq:

In fact, Obama’s Senate voting record on Iraq is nearly identical to Clinton’s. Over the two years Obama has been in the Senate, the only Iraq-related vote on which they differed was the confirmation earlier this year of General George Casey to be Chief of Staff of the Army, which Obama voted for and Clinton voted against. [ABC News, 5/17/07]

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