Washington DC, June 21 — Tonight political prisoner Larry Sinclair is spending his fourth night in the DC Jail, the victim of a Gestapo-style enemies’ list operation carried out just three blocks from the White House last Wednesday afternoon.

Sinclair had come to the National Press Club to detail his charges that the self-proclaimed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Hussein Obama had indulged in two homosexual encounters complete with crack cocaine in early November 1999, that Obama was complicit in the December 2007 assassination of Donald Young, the gay choirmaster of Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and that’s Obama’s resident perception monger, David Axelrod, had paid the pornographic website Whitehouse.com $750,000 to organize a campaign of character assassination against Sinclair, culminating in a faked polygraph test. At the close of the press conference, Sinclair was arrested inside the press club by US Marshals and DC police, apparently based on an old Delaware warrant.

GESTAPO TACTICS IN THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, THE TEMPLE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

Where are the civil libertarians? Where are the paladins of the ACLU? Where is the outcry and the indignation? Is no one concerned about threats to lynch a gay man for political reasons in the heart of the nation’s capital? Where are the left liberals who have been ostensibly so concerned about civil rights and civil liberties from Nixon to Bush-Cheney? Perhaps they are sleeping, or perhaps they have drunk the Obama Kool-Aid and have become morally insane.

Or perhaps they are so obsessed with the reform of the FISA law and the danger that Bush might be listening in to their telephone calls that they do not notice when a prominent critic of a presidential candidate who is infamously a darling of the establishment media is actually arrested, taken into custody and led away, the target of Gestapo tactics in the National Press Club, the sanctum sanctorum of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the First Amendment generally.

Surely the weak sisters who have joined Obama’s fifth column are morally insane when they joke about how Barky’s Myrmidons were able to arrest Sinclair. If the First Amendment does not apply to speech which is not popular with the establishment and the mob, then the First Amendment does not exist at all, for anybody. Any journalist or writer should be able to see that they themselves may be next, now that the US Marshals are serving as the “Fight the Smears” enforcement arm of the Obama campaign. Selective and vindictive prosecution, anyone?

The mere fact that Larry Sinclair had been able to hold such a successful press conference was already a serious defeat for the corrupt and brutal Obama machine.

Sinclair had appeared in the Holeman Lounge before more than a hundred journalists, with 10 cameras set up on tripods in the back of the room. The number of handheld cameras, camcorders, and tape recorders was beyond counting. The press conference was dignified, businesslike, factual. There was no screaming, no disruption, no threats or insults.

Every journalist who wanted to ask a question was given ample opportunity to do so, and about three dozen questions were asked. Reasonable follow-ups were allowed.

There were journalists from Britain, from Germany, from India, from China. Most of the questions represented honest attempts to pin down the facts of what was being alleged.

Sinclair’s honesty compared favorably to most politicians today. He started his presentation with a detailed admission of his criminal record, jail time served, his pending court motion to dismiss an old Colorado warrant, and a statement that his troubles with the law date back more than 20 years to 1980-1986.

In the question-and-answer segment, Sinclair gave a straight answer to every question he was asked. He did not dodge questions, he did not prevaricate, he did not refuse to answer questions, and he did not bungle his answers. Sinclair has made serious mistakes in life, as he readily concedes. But Sinclair is not a candidate, not a person who has to be evaluated by the public and then accepted or rejected.

Sinclair comes forward as a witness with a series of allegations to make and a story to tell. It is up to public opinion and most emphatically the news media to evaluate those allegations and those facts, including through the efforts of enterprising investigative journalists anxious to make a name for themselves by finding out the truth about what is potentially the biggest political scandal of the century. Obama, after all, is the candidate of whom we know little and who needs urgently to be evaluated.

The issue posed is not what you think about Larry Sinclair. The overriding issue is the presidency in a time of military defeat, institutional crisis, and economic breakdown.

HOMOPHOBIC DEATH THREATS AGAINST SINCLAIR

Obama’s lemming legions, and especially his notorious mercenary squadristi of the Internet, had done everything possible to sabotage and disrupt Sinclair’s press conference. One Obama backer had issued a categorical death threat against Sinclair in terms that made it abundantly clear that a homophobic hate murder might be in the offing. The FBI and the District of Columbia police had shown zero interest in offering Sinclair protection against a possible hit by one of Obama’s fanatics.

Once it is accepted that police agencies can intervene in political campaigns, it is possible to a rest or detain almost anyone if the interest is great enough. The old warrant used to incarcerate Sinclair most probably refers to events already covered by the statute of limitations.

If nothing can be found at this level, there are always old parking tickets and library fines that can be ginned up. Any political candidate who has had dealings with the Federal Elections Commission can be hauled in on some minor technical violation. The precedent established by last Wednesday’s events at the National Press Club is exceedingly ominous for the public life of this country.

The irony is that repression is now being carried out not to help the Republicans but under ultra-left cover, to help the radical subversive Obama.

Since the warrant used as the pretext to arrest Sinclair apparently came from Delaware, our attention naturally turns to Senator Joe Biden, the incorrigible blowhard and defeated presidential candidate who is now known to be angling for the post of vice president or Secretary of State in a future Obama regime.

We also note that Biden’s son, the nepotist Beau Biden, is the current Attorney General of Delaware. As the cops would say, the Biden machine, anxious to ingratiate themselves with Obama, had the means, motive, and opportunity to arrange this outrageous arrest. For those gullible enough to believe that civil liberties might improve under an Obama regime, this ought to provide a reality shock.

Do not assume that civil liberties will get better under Obama; the evidence is now that they will get worse. Obama’s National Press Club caper is as blatant as anything seen under Bush – and Barky is not even in the White House.

At the end of his detailed indictment of Obama, Sinclair demanded information on four points. The first involves Obama as phone records for November 3, 1999 through November 8, 1999 — the time frame of the two allegedly encounters between Obama and Sinclair, mediated by Paramjit Multani of Five Star Limo at O’Hare Airport. The second involves Obama’s phone records for September 2007 — December 23, 2007, when Sinclair was receiving probing phone calls from Donald Young about how much Sinclair had revealed concerning Obama — calls that ended when Young was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds just before Christmas 2007.

Sinclair’s third demand for clarification touches communications from Obama, Axelrod, and campaign manager David Plouffe to Whitehouse.com in January and February 2008. Sinclair’s fourth point regards possible payments by Obama, Obama’s campaign, Axelrod, Plouffe, and Axelrod’s AKP Message and Media to Whitehouse.com in that same time frame of January-February 2008.

OBAMA MUST ANSWER, NOT EVADE

It is now up to Obama to answer these charges. It is imperative that this be done now, without further delay. No responsible citizen wants a president who can be blackmailed and thus turned into a puppet because he is hiding secrets about bisexual activities, crack cocaine, political murder, and character assassination campaigns.

It is also up to the great news organizations, including ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, to carry out their responsibility to the public. These news organizations should not play the role of kept courtesans of those in political power. As Sinclair pointed out, he has told his story and has thus done everything he can.

It is now up to the great media concerns to locate and interview the limo driver Paramjit Multani, to investigate the relevant telephone records, and above all to question Obama himself about this very serious matter. It is not up to the corporate media to sit back and sniff about whether a Sinclair has conclusively proven his own case to their satisfaction or not; the proving or disproving is the responsibility of the media, and let them make damn sure that they get it right.

By today’s journalistic standards, Sinclair’s allegations are extraordinarily substantive already, especially when compared with some other major scandal allegations heard during the primaries. Sinclair has filed a federal civil suit against Obama and Axelrod, complete with sworn affidavits and court papers.

This means that he is willingly risking Rule 11 penalties for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

He has also made statements to the Chicago police about his contacts with murder victim Donald Young. These steps represent a very high degree of public commitment by Sinclair to the truth of what he is saying.

Compare this to the shoddy standards of the New York Times which, on February 21, 2008 published and prominently displayed on its front page an innuendo about a supposed sex affair between Senator McCain and a certain Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. Not one single solitary named source was cited to support this innuendo. Or, take the case of Vanity Fair magazine, the house organ of decadent left liberalism, which included a slander piece entitled “The Comeback Id” by Todd Purdom in its July 2008 issue. Here again, there was not one single named source who was willing to have his or her name publicly associated with Purdom’s sleazy allegations.

It is painfully obvious that there is one set of journalistic standards for the Perfect Master Obama, and another and much laxer set for the competition. This is intolerable.

NO PRIVACY FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO ACCESS THE NUCLEAR BUTTON

It is fair to say that the idea of a private sphere for US presidential candidates about which the general public is not entitled to know anything became obsolete at the same time that intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads became available around 1960 to 1965. Since then, every presidential candidate has in effect appeared before the public asking to get his or her hands on the thermonuclear button that can start World War III.

At this point, the notion of a private sphere for presidential candidates becomes wholly untenable. In this day and age, we have the right to know everything but everything about presidential nominees who are asking for our votes.

We have a right to know their full personal histories, with no exceptions, no omissions, and no withheld documents.

We have a right to know if they are HIV-positive and whether they ever registered for the draft.

We want to know if they have received electroshock, psychopharmaca, and whether they have been treated by a psychiatrist.

We have a right to see their birth certificate, their college transcript, their senior thesis if they wrote one, their law school transcript, their passport, papers from earlier times in public office, and all other relevant documents.

We have a right to know about their mother, their father, their sister, their brother, their Aunt Tilly, their best friends at all stages of life, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their pets, their backers, their sponsors, their gurus, their controllers, and their associates of every kind.

More than a right to know these things, we have an imperative duty to find them out.

For they are asking to get their hands on the thermonuclear button, the misuse of which can unleash a thermonuclear fireball that will not respect any aspect of the privacy of ourselves and our family.

Naturally, candidates are free to make their own choices in life just like everybody else: they can choose their religion, their personal associations, their forms of recreation, and all the rest in any way that they like.

But none of this — absolutely nothing — can be claimed as a secret off limits to the attention of the public. All of it must be thoroughly investigated, aired, and published when the presidency is at stake.

An Air Force crewman at a missile silo in the Dakotas goes through a background check which leaves scant room for privacy. We must demand nothing less from presidential candidates.

OBAMA’S COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT AND ALLEGED COCAINE USE

Larry Sinclair alleges that Obama has indulged in crack cocaine. Those familiar with the public literature about the current tenant of the White House know very well that there are many indications that his extraordinarily low level of performance may derive from cognitive impairment brought on by habitual cocaine use. How many more coke fiends in the White House are compatible with the further national survival of the United States?

Ronald Reagan notoriously suffered from cognitive impairment and constantly made his remarks off index cards which he kept hidden in his hands. Those index cards were a low-tech version of the glass plates of the Teleprompter upon which Obama relies.

As soon as he cannot read his words off those glass plates, Obama begins to stutter, to stammer and babble, to hem and to haw, repeatedly losing his syntax and constantly interjecting “um” and “you know.” What if Obama’s cocaine use really did extend beyond 1981, as he suggests in his memoir, and continued all the way to late 1999 at the very least, as Sinclair is alleging?

That might suggest that Obama suffers from greater cognitive impairment than Bush, as Obama’s incredible series of gaffes at the end of the primaries also indicates. Larry Sinclair stressed during his press conference that he has been a gay man all his life, and that he regarded the crack cocaine issue as the central one, at least until the time of the Donald Young murder.

During the press conference, Sinclair announced that he was willing to make his own personal medical records, including mental health records, available to responsible representatives of accredited news organizations, at their own expense.

That means that Sinclair is much more forthcoming about his medical history than Obama, who has withheld his medical records and offered a single meaningless page of advertising copy signed by his personal physician. And remember that Sinclair is not running for any office, while Obama wants to be president.

TWO MONTHS TO THE ROLL CALL OF THE STATES, AUGUST 27

The Democratic Party still has more than two months in which these very serious, substantive, and detailed allegations against its presumptive candidate can be thoroughly investigated.

It is unthinkable that any responsible political leader would be willing to see Obama receive the nomination while this sword of Damocles hangs over his head. Larry Sinclair’s videotape has been on the Internet since mid-January, and it has at various times been the object of discussion on something approaching a million websites.

The issues are Obama’s crack cocaine use, his bisexuality, his possible involvement in the Donald Young assassination, and the allegations of character assassination and harassment against Sinclair funded by the Obama campaign.

Karl Rove knows all about each one of these points, and there is no way to deter Karl Rove and his cohorts.

So, although it may seem incomprehensible to Obama’s drooling acolytes, the interest of the Democratic Party is best served by thorough airing of these allegations to before the roll call of the states is held on August 27, 2008 — and this is exactly what Sinclair has been trying to do since mid-January.

If Sinclair had been a GOP deployment, he would simply have waited for September or October to come forward.

There are of course those who lament and regret that it is necessary to dredge up the sordid details of a figure like Obama. They say that it is better to use political campaigns to talk about issues.

This document may sound plausible, but it is totally wrong, and the fault rests with Obama.

First, Obama does not campaign on issues in any systematic way. He presents himself as the Perfect Master, the Anointed One, the Savior, the Messiah, the Mahdi. His hysterical followers are obsessed, not with a political program or a set of issues, but with the personality cult of Obama. This means that any attempt to engage Obama on the issues is by definition an impotent and self-defeating tactic.

The only useful objections that can be made to Obama are ad hominem biographical revelations designed to show that he is not so anointed after all, and that his ability to walk on water has been overestimated.

Then there is also the matter of Obama’s notorious duplicity and flip-flops even where he does have specific positions on certain issues. First Obama wanted a fixed schedule for getting out of Iraq, but Samantha Power revealed that this was not the case at all. Barky said he wanted a different kind of foreign policy, and then he pandered to AIPAC, probably lying through his teeth in the process. First, Obama wanted to help the lower income brackets, but now he is talking about cutting the corporate income tax. Obama attacked free trade in Ohio and Pennsylvania, even as his top economic controller, Austan Goolsbee of the Friedmanite Chicago school reassured the Canadians that this was just election posturing; now Obama has told Fortune magazine that he likes free trade and is devoted to “free markets.”

First, Obama was going to be tough on FISA; now he is going along with the Democratic congressional leaders as they attempt to appease Bush.

Obama had built his career on ethics in government and reducing the role of political contributions; now he has turned his back on the only meager legislative achievements by becoming the first presidential candidate in modern times to repudiate matching funds in the general election.

On all these points, to attempt a substantive debate with Obama is a fool’s errand. The only way to pin Barky down is through pointed reference to crucial facts in his own background, biography, and associations which cannot be changed or swept under the rug. Any other approach is deliberate impotence and capitulation.

FREE LARRY SINCLAIR!

In the meantime, Larry Sinclair is still sitting in the DC jail. He could be extradited to Delaware at any time.

What kind of a presidential campaign are we going to have when critics of the most radical subversive to ever get this close to the presidency have to worry about a knock on the door in the middle of the night? It is time to put massive public pressure on the Obama campaign to drop their enemies’ list operation against Larry Sinclair, and to release him from jail at once.

Webster G. Tarpley is the author of Obama - The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate.

The part time occupation of the part time Jews in the major media outlets for the last week or so has been to tackle Obama’s Jewish problem head on, in the same way that major corporations tackle the public revelation their product is fatally toxic to babies– by shaking their heads, smiling weakly and assuring us that it’s all in our heads.

If we’re to believe the New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the good people at Media Central, the whole Jewish problem with Obama is the result of some provocative emails sent out by Karl Rove in his spare time that unfairly paint Obama as a Muslim to some gullible senior citizens.

“There, there,” the media assures these elders, “Obama isn’t a Muslim. He’s the Messiah come to lead us to the promised land of big government, Cuban quality health care and environmental taxes on every ounce of bread we eat.” And on the way there he may stop by the Middle East to lead Hamas to Jerusalem.

“Hasn’t Obama said that he’s Pro-Israel,” the columnists bewails, “how many times does he need to say it.” They don’t stay to hear the reply that he doesn’t need to say it, he needs to be it. For a skeptical profession they seem oddly offended that anyone is taking a politician’s statements in an election year with a grain of salt. “Listen to the man,” they say, “pay no attention to the Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Soros, Tony Lake, Samantha Power and Robert O. Malley behind the curtain.”

Hasn’t Obama already fired Samantha Power who wanted an invasion of Israel and Robert O’ Malley who was already privately meeting with Hamas, they protest. That just leaves George Soros without whom Obama would be just another junior Senator angling for an entry level spot on a committee, Brzezinski who helped bring Iran and Al Queda into existence and the rest of Obama’s radicals, both from his Chicago Wright days and his Harvard period, who are all too full of thoughts on what should be done with America and Israel.

The media which until recently was doing its best to pretend that the only people who could possibly oppose Obama were Satanists or worse yet Christians, has decided to believe that the only Democrats who oppose Obama are the senile elderly, hysterical feminists or rednecks. And the media is sure that once Obama is officially anointed at the convention, they along with the Jews will learn to fall into line behind the Kossacks, just like their ancestors did in Eastern Europe. If not, there’s always a cavalry charge.

While the leaders of major Jewish organizations are being called on the carpet by the Democratic leadership and told that they will lose influence and face a major backlash and the destruction of the “Black-Jewish alliance” if they don’t get behind Obama right now and leap into action to reassure their communities that Obama is A-OK; the Jewish public’s concerns are being poo-poohed by the press which is certain those ignorant folks in Brooklyn and Miami Beach will follow marching orders at the polls as soon as their own leadership does. For now some of the Jewish organizations are holding out for assurances that will no doubt fall away once Obama stops by for a meet and greet over bagels and lox and assures them how much he enjoyed Fiddler on the Roof.

As the ultimate outsider who belongs nowhere Obama has shown a great talent for repackaging himself into a dozen ethnic and racial identities. Obama can be white or black. He can be Christian or Muslim. He can be a wealthy Harvard educated professional or a street level community activist. Like an MC Escher picture, he’s a collection of impossibly intersecting levels that seem oddly out of perspective for reasons that aren’t apparent until you try to follow his contradictions. With all that in mind, there’s no reason that Obama can’t also repackage himself as a Jew.

To that end, Obama is already reimagining himself as a Zionist thanks to a Jewish sixth grade camp counselor and speaking of his love for the writings of Leon Uris and Philip Roth. While it’s safe to assume that Obama won’t be giving any readings of Leon Uris’ The Haj, a book that captured with unnerving accuracy the psychological fault lines of Arab culture, he is displaying a talent more worthy of the literary works of other writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald or Theodore Dreiser. The talent of recreating himself into what people most want to see, the gift of the true con artist.

Obama hasn’t begun name dropping Uris and Roth out of a sudden love for old Jewish writers. Instead he’s discovered a sudden love of the same things that elderly and middle aged Jewish voters who have jilted him are interested in. Like the cynical suitor who studies a girl’s habits to discover her tastes and mirrors them to seduce her, Obama has made it his practice to jump in and out of identities and personas. Today Obama is reading Leon Uris. Tomorrow there’s a rally in San Francisco and he’s reading Amy Tan. The day after that he will be connecting to Feminists by namedropping some Erica Jong. Which selection in the infinitely expandable Obama Book Club best reflects who he is? The answer is none of them. The only thing that reflects on Obama is that he is determined to be President and willing to say anything to make it happen.

Jewish voters are nothing more to him than another breed of cattle to be coaxed through the gates of the polling centers to vote for him. The Democratic party relies on a varied and diverse herd led by Judas Goat community leaders to win office and they’re good at managing the herd. Stop by for a pizza in Little Italy, a bagel on the Lower East Side, some won ton in Chinatown and a burger in Harlem. Shake everyone’s hand, smile, relate and then slip some assurances and earmarks under the table to the community leaders. The herd sighs. The herd is happy as they led back to the barn until the next milking or slaughter.

In making the choice to break with Obama. Jewish voters are being given the chance to allow a larger moral reckoning to win out over this cheap type of ethnic pandering that the Obama campaign is engaging in. It is not guilt that should motivate Jewish voters to reject Obama. There will be plenty time for guilt after 8 years of Obama have done their damage just as there was after 1946. Guilt is the luxury of those who made an unforgivable mistake. This is the year when we can prevent the mistake from being made. Guilt is the refuge of those who know that what they are doing is wrong but refuse to change. This is the year when we can change.

Obama is not our savior. Obama is no one’s savior but his own. As his cult of personality spreads, millions of Americans are throwing reason and rationality out the window to embrace the promise of a one man solution to all their problems. But Obama’s background has left him with two poisoned outsider’s gifts, a legacy of hatred for America and the ability to camouflage his real feelings to blend in anywhere.

When a nation brings a cult of personality leader to power, it is typically at a low point in its national self-confidence and finds an outsider to rule over them in the hope he will save them from themselves. Just as Hitler was an Austrian ruling over Germany, Stalin was an Ossetian ruling over Russia, Obama is an African Arab with a Muslim background positioning himself for the White House. With a slim record and a campaign built primarily around his outgoing personality, Obama is America’s biggest mistake waiting to be made. Let’s not play any part in making it.

We don’t need to be saved from ourselves. We need to be saved from leaders who think that we rather than they are the problem. We need to be saved from leaders who imagine that disarming America and destroying Israel will make our enemies love us. We need to be saved from leaders who have more empathy for the enemy than they do for the citizens they rule over.

We don’t need to be saved by a lifelong con artist with a manufactured biography who repackages himself to appeal to everyone while concealing his real sympathies behind a facade of multilevel marketing outreach. We need to be saved from him and only we can save ourselves from him.

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From my blog: Sultan Knish.

The Clinton campaign ad featuring a 3 a.m. telephone call as a metaphor for experienced leadership in foreign policy has generated considerable comment, but much of the reaction is from people who have never been involved in foreign policy and certainly never had to field such a call in a crisis situation. Some of the responses are from advisers to the Obama campaign who know better but are actively diminishing the importance and realities of presidential engagement for immediate political advantage.

To begin with, there are such 3 a.m. calls. During my long career as a diplomat, including crises and military actions in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, I have been on the receiving end, the sending end, and the development of options that led to some of those late night calls. The president’s role in crisis management is direct, critical and reflects the exercise of leadership in its most fundamental and powerful form. That capability is not intuitive; rather, it comes from years of experience, training and exposure to the complexities that are in inherent in international relations.

On August 3, 1990, while serving as acting Ambassador to Iraq, I received a middle of the night call from then President George H.W. Bush’s Middle East adviser, who informed me that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. While the president had not personally called me, it was clear to me from that moment on that he was directly responsible for every significant decision made and engaged in marshaling the forces of the U.S. government and the support of the international community in what ultimately became Desert Storm.

In 1995 and 1996, while serving as Political Adviser to the Commander in Chief of U.S. Armed Forces, I was directly involved in the diplomacy associated with the movement of troops from Western Europe to Bosnia in support of the efforts of President Clinton and his special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, to implement the Dayton Accords and bring an end to the Balkan genocide.

In 1998, as Senior Director for Africa in President Clinton’s National Security Council, I helped orchestrate six phone calls, some late at night, directly from President Clinton, three each to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles, and Eritrean President Afwerki, to stop the air war between the two countries. Two of Barack Obama’s senior advisers, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, were also involved in that effort, and could attest to the importance of presidential involvement if they would choose not to remain silent as a ploy to protect their candidate’s slender credentials.

In each of the three cases, there was a critical common denominator: direct presidential engagement. During the Desert Shield part of the first Gulf War, then President Bush personally chaired many of the National Security Council meetings and made nonstop calls to foreign leaders to assemble the international coalition and secure the U.N. resolutions that provided the legal underpinning for the military action.

In former Yugoslavia, President Clinton played a similar role, reaching out to friends and allies, to adversaries and belligerents, in order to reach agreements that permitted the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

And in the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict, the aerial bombings of Addis Ababa and Asmara ceased thanks to the personal efforts of a President.

Contrast the above examples with the last seven plus years of George W. Bush and the conclusion is inescapable: presidential leadership is critical and should be tempered with experience and capability.

Senator Clinton has a long and well documented history of involvement in many of critical foreign policy issues we have confronted and will continue to confront as a nation. Critics can quibble about the details of the health plan she fought for in the 1990s, or whether hers was the decisive or merely an important voice in the Northern Ireland peace efforts, but there can be no denying that she has been in the arena for a generation fighting for what she believes in, gaining experience and developing leadership skills. She has traveled the world and met with international leaders both as the First Lady and as a respected senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee. As NSC director on Africa I experienced her direct positive involvement in U.S.-African relations; it was she, as First Lady who advanced through her own travel, then urged and made possible President Clinton’s historic trip. In the Senate, she has aggressively exercised her oversight responsibility and held the Pentagon’s feet to the fire on plans related to withdrawal from Iraq, shaped legislation requiring reports to Congress, and cosponsored legislation with Senator Byrd to deauthorize the war with Iraq. She has exercised the levers of power because she knows how to do so. That is not a small thing; it is not a campaign theme. It is simply true and goes to the heart of whether she, or anyone, is prepared to be the president to manage at once two wars and a global economic crisis.

Senator Obama is clearly a gifted politician and orator. I disagree profoundly with his transparently political efforts to turn George Bush’s war into Hillary Clinton’s responsibility. I was present in that debate, in Washington, from beginning to end, and Obama was nowhere to be seen. His current campaign aides in foreign policy, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, were also in Washington, but they chose to remain silent during that debate, when it mattered.

Claims of superior intuitive judgment by his campaign and by him are self-evidently disingenuous, especially in light of disclosures about his long associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko. But his assertions of advanced judgment are also ludicrous when the question of what Obama has accomplished in his four years in the Senate is considered.

As the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee on Europe, he has not chaired a single substantive oversight hearing, even though the breakdown in our relations with Europe and NATO is harming our operations in Afghanistan. Nor did he take a single official trip to Europe as chairman. This is the sum total of his actions in the most important responsibility he has had in the Senate. What are his actual experiences that reassure us that when the phone rings at 3 a.m. he will know what to do, which levers of power to pull, or which world leaders he can count on?

Obama has stated that he will rely upon his advisers. But how will he know which ones to depend upon and how will he be able to evaluate what they say? Already, one of his chief foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power, has been compelled to resign for, among other indiscretions, honestly revealing on a British television program that Obama’s public position on withdrawal from Iraq is not really his true position, nor does it reflect what he would do. Her gaffe exposed a vein of cynicism on national security. How confident can we be in his judgment? In fact, the hard truth is that he has no such experience.

Obama has tried to have it both ways on the issue of national security. On the one hand, he claims his intuition somehow would make him best equipped to handle the difficult challenges that face the next president. On the other hand, he tries to ridicule and dismiss as relatively insignificant the idea that actual experience with and intimate knowledge of foreign affairs and leaders, the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and the intricacies of diplomacy matter. He has even suggested that talking about the problems of national security amounts to exploitation of “fear.” One of Obama’s fervent supporters, a Harvard professor named Orlando Patterson, who has no expertise in foreign policy, wrote absurdly in a New York Times op-ed that the 3 a.m. ad wasn’t about national security at all, but really a subliminal racist attack. Delusions aside, sometimes a discussion about national security is about national security.

There will, in fact, be 3 a.m. phone calls for the next president. They are not make believe. I have been there for such calls. The next president cannot be afraid or hesitant of handling the enormous national security crises that President Bush will leave behind. One thing is certain — the calls will come. Obama has only an abdication of his chief senatorial responsibility as a basis for assessing what his judgment might be if and when the phone rings. Which of his shifting coterie of volatile advisers would he turn to? Will it be the one who repudiated his withdrawal plan, exposing his real intention, prior to being forced to resign? Or will it be those advisers who remained silent until politically convenient — several years and several thousand lives after the shock and awe invasion, conquest and disastrous occupation of Iraq?

The calls are real and experience is real, too. The campaign might be treated as a game by the media, but those calls are serious, deadly serious.

And there’s that he needs more than the usual number of advisers because he has a tendency to push the wrong button. Of course, who he chooses as his advisers makes one shudder. My prediction is that if he’s somehow elected president, the “Ship of State” will become the “Ship of Fools.”

Here are some more bits and pieces on those powerful advisers:

• David Alexrod: “Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, who also advises and defends and speaks for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, hasn’t forgotten how politics is played back home.” — from John Kass’s latest column, “Chicago Way the only way to settle Obama-Clinton tiff,” for the Chicago Tribune, March 9, 2008.

  (Does that mean, sigh, that you and I now have to search Daley’s speeches for “hope,” “change,” “yes we can,” and “words, just words”?)

• Austan Goolsbee: “One aspect of this whole episode that has gotten less coverage is the background of Austan Goolsbee. Ron K in Seattle wrote about him in: The Audiology of Hope: DLC Dogwhistle Economics” — from Eriposte’s story today at LeftCoaster, “More on the Obama NAFTA Flap.” Eriposte adds:
  

  RonK’s post is worth a read to discover why George Will likes Austan Goolsbee and why Sen. Obama’s position on economic issues have often tracked to the right of Sen. Clinton. Also, here’s an amusing observation from Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left: … [the story is about a misfire by Kos]

• Tony Rezko: Besides the news that three people Rezko tried to land Illinois state jobs for are now on Obama’s staff, there’s hot speculation on the blogs about why Barack Obama said, with certainty in his now-famous 2002 speech on Iraq, that “I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors.” Continued below …

I have no idea if there is any “there there” on this speculation. But the questions remain. Here’s an excerpt from “One-degree of separation 2: Obama’s 2002 speech and Rezko’s power plant in Iraq,” posted at Avid Editor’s Insights blog (and the same quotes are at MyDD, Rezkowatch, and other blogs) [CORRECTION: Avid Reader took this material from RezkoWatch but didn't clearly provide attribution.]

Let’s focus on the key words ‘I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors’.To say that you know something requires an explanation. It has to be based on information certain—not a belief and certainly not hope. How did Obama know? How could he speak with such certainty? Could it perhaps be because of Obama’s 15-to-20-year friendship with indicted Syrian and Chicago resident Tony Rezko, his political fundraiser patron? Could it possibly be because of Rezko’s long-term relationship with exiles and former residents of Iraq, Syria and Jordan, many of whom have either resided in or visited Chicago? Could it possibly be because of Rezko’s affiliation with Iraqi-British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, alleged to have been a long-time bagman for Saddam Hussein’s secret money-laundering trail, to whom Rezko was ‘introduced several years’ prior to 2005 ‘by a mutual acquaintance in London’ and with whom he entered into a multi-million dollar 62-acre Chicago development deal, and the source of the $3.5 million ‘loan’ wired from a Middle East bank that landed Rezko back in jail January 29, 2008, to await jury selection March 3, 2008? Could it possibly be because of Rezko’s affiliation with corrupt Iraqi exile and Chicago resident—and Interpol fugitive—Aiham Alsammarae who returned to Iraq in 2003 to serve as the Coalition Provisional Authority’s minister of electricity and who was jailed in Iraq in relation to missing millions in reconstruction funds? Could it possibly be because of the joint plan in 2003 by Rezko, Auchi and Alsammarae to build a power plant in Kurdish Iraq—a plan yet unfilled as recently as December 2006?
Note that Auchi claims that no such relationship exists.

Brush aside Obama’s claims of being guilty of making ‘bone-headed’ mistakes in regards to his Rezko-related issues. This very significant one-degree of separation between himself and Rezko’s Iraqi business partners and Saddam Hussein is much more troubling. The apparently now dead-in-the-water plan for the Iraqi power plant—a plan, by the way, openly discussed by Chicago media—raises greater concerns about his judgement where his ties to Rezko are concerned, extending far beyond the unseemly Rezko-facilitated Obama house deal in Chicago or any other assumptions or assertions about political pay-to-play in Illinois.Recently, Chicago political blogger Bill Baar raised questions about the connections between Baghdad and Chicago, saying that:

“Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Ill.), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, ‘[may] not [be] looking hard enough. There is a fascinating trail of philanthropy between Chicago and Baghdad worth sorting out, and considerable sorting it’s going to take.’”

On February 5, 2008, Baar added in regards to the upcoming Rezko trial:

[Writes Baar] We’re going to hear blunt recordings from [the] man who was Obama’s mentor for over 17 years with guys who called themselves ‘The Pope’ (Bob Cellini) and ‘The Rabbi’ (Stuart Levin). They’re going to sound like players out of the Sopranos raising money for Obama: the unamed Political Candidate in the proffer. (A connection leaked to the [Chicago] Sun Times by maybe Levine or Rezko themselves? I doubt Fitz’s office did that.) All it takes is for Obama’s name to pop up a few more times in these documents and recordings and I think Obama will be finished politically. Won’t matter if Obama knew about the wrongdoing or not. Add in the Iraq reconstruction connection when Rezko goes on trial for that, and I think it will be a very damaging picture of Obama’s character and judgement. He won’t survive Illinois politics and Patrick Fitzgerald. …

I don’t know. I just don’t know. But the home purchase is definitely troubling. The American Pundit blog picked up a MyDD diary post, stating, “Hwc looks at the Obama/Rezko land deal and comes to many of the same conclusions I do.” HRC’s diary begins:

The question is whether Rezko did a $925,000 favor for Obama by paying for part of his home? A picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at this NBC news feature with extensive photos of the property:

The American Pundit blog notes:

1) As you can clearly see from the overhead photos in the video, this was clearly NOT an “adjacent” piece of property. This was quite obviously the yard for the Obama house. The only access to the Rezko property is from Obama’s parcel. The intent here was clearly for Rezko to purchase the land and continue making it available for the exclusive use of the Obama family. A $925,000 favor to a sitting US Senator.

Why did Obama buy a strip of “Rezko” land and build a fence? Simple. Obama knew that eventually somebody would photograph the property and the sham nature of the arrangement would be instantly obvious. Thus, he had to do something to give the appearance of Rezko’s land actually being separate from the Obama house. Thus, building a fence (with a gate providing the only access). Obviously, the Rezko property was never intended to be a separate piece of land and a fence on the original lot line would have been absurd…

American Pundit asks: “Does this sham property purchase, regardless of its legality, seem like good ‘judgment’ to you?,” and then recommends its readers check out the rest of the MyDD diary.

It’s all about the company he keeps.

And here’s an effective YouTube on the Samantha Power brouhaha:

But Sam had to release the guillotine herself, then get her head back down on the block: “‘She submitted the resignation,’ said a source in the Obama campaign. “‘She made this decision on her own to submit her resignation and we accepted it. Obviously, there was a lot of pressure from outside sources.’”

Then the gallant Zbigniew Brzezinski stuck his own neck out: “[He] seems to think that departed Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power got a raw deal.”

But wait. It turns out that Mr. Zbigniew is a headless horseman: “Obama [has] distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Jimmy Carter administration who traveled to Iowa with Obama when he made an Iraq speech.”  

“I do not share [Zbigniew Brzezinski's] views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally,” Obama said. “He’s not one of my key advisers. I’ve had lunch with him once. I’ve exchanged e-mails with him maybe three times. He came to Iowa to introduce … for a speech on Iraq.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition has been critical of Obama’s plan, if elected president, to call “a summit in the Muslim world.” Executive Director Matt Brooks said he was “deeply troubled” by the proposal.

– Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times

I’ve heard that the fish rots from the head.

UPDATE / Enjoy:

Clinton spokesman Wolfson calls Power’s comments on Iraq “troubling and extraordinary.”

Gen. Wesley Clark: “I’m quite concerned about what we heard from the Obama campaign because I’m not sure where it leads us….”

Former State Dept. official James Rubin: In Obama campaign “it’s amateur hour on making foreign policy.” …

Here’s Sen. Obama, in his own words, on the quality of his foreign policy advisers — voters will no doubt trust his judgment:

Obama: voters can trust his judgment when selecting advisers that will shape his administration’s foreign policy. The New York Times reported, “Obama has implored voters to consider his judgment in foreign policy…that judgment, he said, would be carried over to selecting people to fill his administration. He said his views were shaped by his foreign policy advisers.” [New York Times, 11/2/07]

There are more sage Obama comments below, along with a fine piece in today’s New York magazine Intelligencer on “Monstergate”:

Obama turns to advisers when formulating foreign policy positions. When asked by the New York Times, “When you formulate your position for where we go from here in Iraq, which experts to you consult with? What informs your judgment and assessment of the next steps?” Obama replied, “Well, we have a pretty wide circle of advisers. We talk to everybody from the usual suspects in Washington – various foreign policy experts – to mid-rank military officers, many of whom have served in Iraq, to higher ranking officers like General Scott Gration who flew repeated combat missions and has helped to advise us on a range of these issues and people like Richard Danzig, who is one of our key foreign policy advisers. So it’s a pretty wide circle. [New York Times, 11/1/07 ]

Obama ‘answered that he would surround himself with competent people.’ A voted in New Hampshire “asked how he would choose the staff and advisers who would help him make decisions. Obama answered that he would surround himself with competent people with integrity and independence _ like Abraham Lincoln, he said. He pointed out that Lincoln also was a former Illinois legislator who faced great skepticism about his experience. ”I guess that was a leap of faith, too,” Obama said.” [AP, 8/23/07]

Now, the New York magazine commentary today, “Heilemann: Can Obama Handle the Awakened Media Beast?“:

So what to make of Monstergate? On the surface, the campaign controversy du jour could hardly be a more straightforward story. … This morning, as word of the incendiary indiscretion spread (the story led the Today show) and the fever mounted, a number of congressional Clinton backers demanded that Power resign from the campaign. “It’s really a test for Obama,” said Representative Nita Lowey of New York, and she was right. …

But Monstergate, I think, reflects something deeper: the fact that many of the people around Obama have grown accustomed to, shall we say, a forgiving national press corps. Retroactive declarations of off-the-recordness happen all the time. Whether the journalist confronted with one chooses to let it slide or be a hard-ass is a matter of discretion. How much do you like the source? How much do you need the source? It’s fair to say that many people in Obama’s circle believe that Clinton is in fact a monster. Many have said something similar to reporters. And this was not the first time one of them slipped up on attribution. But until now, the press, as part of a broader pattern of kid-gloves treatment of Obama, has largely chosen to let those mistakes pass. And that has bred a certain sloppiness — one that, in the case of Power, has now come back to bite them.

This sloppiness is not confined to dealing with the press. Much has been written about the case of Obama’s economic guru, Austan Goolsbee, and the Canadians, but it’s worth revisiting in the context of Monstergate. In telling the Canucks to pay no attention to his boss’ saber-rattling on NAFTA, Goolsbee was being candid and stating the plain truth: Nobody who knows Obama believes for a second that he is anything but a staunch free trader; they know that he has no intention of trashing the trade treaty. But Goolsbee was also being sloppy. And so was the campaign in its ludicrously transparent, transparently ludicrous efforts to mislead the press about what occurred. (The Canadians contacted Goolsbee not in his capacity as Obama’s guy on economics but merely as a University of Chicago academic? As Bill Clinton might put it, Give me a break!) The whole imbroglio fairly reeked of an operation that had become accustomed — too accustomed for its own good — to a sleepy, besotted press corps.

By now, of course, it’s clear to anyone with two eyes in his head that the kid-gloves days are over for Obama. …

[...]

Few campaigns I’ve ever covered have been run with as much skill and discipline as Obama’s has. His chief strategist, David Axelrod, handles the press with aplomb and savvy. Robert Gibbs, his communications czar, is one tough cookie. But the rest of Obama’s adjutants — and the candidate himself — had better get with the program. The Media Beast, after months of blissful slumber, is now awake and as grouchy as an undercaffeinated grizzly bear. And the Clinton campaign has no intention of letting it return to sleep. …

READ ALL.

UPDATES: MSNBC video above (sans her far more important remarks to the BBC about Obama’s real Iraq policy) and story (which also fails to mention Power’s comments on Iraq). Below the fold, video of Power’s remarks on Iraq, and Facthub rebuttals. Hillary says, ““I think Senator Obama did the right thing but I think it is important to look at what she and his other advisers say behind closed doors…”

Original: Here’s another precious moment from the “Obama Amateur Hour” (so reminiscent of the “wink, wink, nod, nod” and embarrassingly amateurish nature of Obama’s NAFTA-gate).

Via The Page/Time’s headline story, “Power Shocker II: Adviser Pulls Back on Obama Iraq Pledge“:

Foreign policy confidant and TIME contributor tells yet another overseas interviewer that troop withdrawals might not come as fast as promised: “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator.”

“You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009. . . . So to think – it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, ‘Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.’”

Watch BBC interview here.

It brings to mind, for me, the Commander In Chief issue, and the readiness of Obama’s staff. Yes, she has resigned, but not before uttering those soon-to-be infamous words about, wink-wink, the truthiness about Iraq …

UPDATE:

Power Says Obama Iraq Plan Is Only A ‘Best Case Scenario’

KEY POINT: “Sen. Obama has repeatedly criticized Hillary for not having a “firm” and “clear” withdrawal deadline …” A SAMPLE:

Sen. Obama: ‘Why we would try [Hillary’s] approach as opposed to simply setting a timetable for withdrawal strikes me as a convoluted approach to the problem.’ “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to introduce an amendment repealing the congressional authorization for the war. It would require the president to seek new authority from Congress if he wanted to continue operations past Oct. 11, 2007, five years after initial authorization was given. ‘If you simply repeal the language, then presumably you’d have to reauthorize something. You’ve got 150,000 troops over there and support personnel,’ Obama told The Associated Press in an interview after a campaign stop in Las Vegas. ‘Why we would try that approach as opposed to simply setting a timetable for withdrawal strikes me as a convoluted approach to the problem,’ he said.” [AP, 7/13/07]

READ more examples and rebuttals.

More from Politico:

For all the chatter about Obama adviser Samantha Power’s calling Clinton a “monster,” another set of remarks made on her book tour in the United Kingdom may be equally threatening to the Obama campaign: Comments in a BBC interview that express a lack of confidence that Obama will be able to carry through his plan to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months.

“He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator,” she said at one point in the interview.

Power downplayed Obama’s commitment to quick withdrawal from Iraq on Hard Talk, a program that often exceeds any of the U.S. talk shows in the rigor of its grillings. She was challenged on Obama’s Iraq plan, as it appears on his website, which says that Obama “will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”

“What he’s actually said, after meeting with the generals and meeting with intelligence professionals, is that you – at best case scenario – will be able to withdraw one to two combat brigades each month. That’s what they’re telling him. He will revisit it when he becomes president,” Power says.

The host, Stephen Sackur, challenged her:”So what the American public thinks is a commitment to get combat forces out in 16 months isn’t a commitment isn’t it?”

“You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009,” she said. “He 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. So to think – it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, ‘Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.’”

“It’s a best-case scenario,” she said again.

MORE from The Page’s highlights of the Power resignation brouhaha:

OBAMA ADVISER LEAVES AFTER CONTROVERSIAL REMARKS CALLING CLINTON A “MONSTER.”

“I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton….” Read her full statement here.

She also accused Clinton of “deceit” and said she “is stooping to anything.”

Comes after Clinton House supporters call for Obama to drop the foreign policy ace and TIME contributor on media call with reporters.

Listen to the full call — including more on Wolfson’s Ken Starr comments, seating Michigan and Florida delegates and a potential Pennsylvania debate – here.

Issue leads NBC’s “Today” Friday morning. Watch it here.

Obama camp holds 1:30 pm ET media call to discuss “recent developments in the race.”

MORE HERE: “Barack Obama forced to decry adviser’s ‘monster’ remarks of Hillary Clinton,” which enumerates more of Power’s insulting and divisive remarks about Sen. Clinton:

… “Interestingly, the people in her innermost circle seem to not mind her; I think they really love her,” she said.

Power said Clinton has looked desperate in her recent TV appearances.

“You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive,” she said. …