Obama’s Blog Links to Troubling Speculation
Submitted by Nick Kelly on May 19, 2008 - 8:11pm.
al Qaeda | Barack Obama | Breaking Political News | national security | Osama bin Laden | Recruiting for the Jihad | Democratic politics
Over at Barack Obama’s community blog, a blogger called Rima posted a response to a May 19 article in the Christian Science Monitor entitled Barack Obama – Muslim Apostate? Personally, I find Rima's response to be rather off the point, but I hope you will forgive me for cluttering up the start of this diary by posting it here in its entirety because the first commenter on this diary seems to think the fact that I linked to it right at the start isn't sufficient.
Dear Sir or Madam:This letter is in response to the article entitled: Barack Obama – Muslim apostate? For Al Qaeda, the answer – and the implication – is clear. By Shireen K. Burki from the May 19, 2008 edition.
As a Christian, I am shocked to find that The Christian Science Monitor finds the willful propagating of unfounded fear in your fellow citizens, your fellow Christians, to be conscionable behavior. Christ’s example is one of love, one of faith, one of forgiveness. Yet over and over so-called Christians everywhere use hate and fear to push an agenda that is anything but Christian.
Furthermore, this story is skewed in its understanding of what provides motivation for anyone around the world to want to attack America. For us to be the enemy of Islam, we must act as an enemy. And we have done exactly that. Rather than acting as true Christians, we have done as they bid us do. We sought revenge. We attacked – proving their point. And everyday we stay in Iraq, a nation that had NOTHING to do with 9/11, we continue to be the occupying infidels they paint us to be. We have tilled the soil and made fertile the recruiting grounds. And after five years, we are putting a whole new generation at risk to be brainwashed into their cause. Some may say we had no other choice, but I ask you did Christ have a choice against the Romans? Could He not have used His power to vanquish them – as Satan bid him do? He passed His test, while we failed ours.
Be clear, it is George Bush and all who served with him that made Bin Laden laugh as played us like a fiddle. Bush has been Bin Ladin’s dream foe. Bin Laden set the trap and Bush took the bait. I can only imagine what dismay he may have felt had we not reacted to 9/11 as he wanted and expected us to. I ponder often the possible outcome had we declared that an act of injustice not war, punishable by law not war, and asked a world-wide judicial presence that included Arab states and Muslim leaders to investigate and render a judgment.
Where there is injustice in the world, there will always be violence. Jesus called us to right the injustices of the world, not by war, but through faith, and love, and charity. I wonder if we had sought to admit our mistakes and right our wrongs; to spend billions to feed and help moderate Muslim families rather waste trillions trying to kill fanatics who simply don’t care if they die while fighting invaders (if faced with invaders, we’d feel the same way); I wonder if their recruits may have opted to go back to their families and live a better a life rather than continue blowing themselves up.
Many of us are now coming to realize that George Bush has hood-winked Christians everywhere pretending to care about the right to life. He has done nothing to protect life. He sends our young people to die. He has shown he cares more about corporate interests that the aim of Christians – to hold to the sanctity of life and to be guided by the life of Jesus in how we are called to live the gift of life. He welcomes death as a useful means to an end and calls it patriotic.
No, it is not the abandoned child of a Muslim assuming the presidency that threatens our security. It is our own inability as Americans and as Christians to wake up to what is going on. It is our failure as individuals and as a people to live as we have been instructed to live and to have faith that following Jesus teachings really does work. No it’s not easy. If it was, why would we have needed Jesus in the first place?
Please, no more lip service! Christian Science Monitor, do you have the fortitude of faith to turn a critical eye inward? Shine the light of truth on yourselves and ask which master you are serving. If you find you really intend to serve our Lord, than you best look harder at the type of stories you run. It is time to tell the truth about how miserably we are failing to live up to the teachings of Jesus Christ – and chief among them is this war based on lies and fear. The kind Ms. Burki seeks to perpetuate.
Image what Jesus would write if He was authoring a letter to you about this article. I dare say He wouldn’t be anymore proud of the “keepers” of the faith in our day than He was of those in His day.
Most Sincerely,
Rima Bonario
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have bothered to read either the article or the response, however, the subtitle of the article grabbed my attention: "For Al Qaeda, the answer – and the implication – is clear."
The fact that Senator Obama – the son of a Muslim father – insists he was never a Muslim before becoming Christian is irrelevant to bin Laden. In bin Laden's eyes, Obama is a murtad fitri, the worst type of apostate, because he was blessed by Allah to be born into the true faith of Islam.
There are two types of apostates according to sharia (Islamic law) and the Hadith (sayings of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him).
The first type is murtad milli, one who converted to Islam and later renounced the faith. The second, and most egregious, type is murtad fitri. It refers to a person born of a Muslim father who renounces his birthright. Two recent examples of the latter are Magdi Allam (a male Egyptian who converted to Catholicism in Italy) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Somali-born woman who's now an atheist). Both now face death threats.
According to Islamic jurisprudence, children of a Muslim father – even an apparently nonpracticing one, such as Obama's father, and irrespective of the mother's faith – are automatically Muslims. Most Muslims around the world agree: A child of a Muslim father is a Muslim. Period.
Sidenote: That’s sort of the opposite of what I understand to be a Jewish tradition. Namely that only a child of a Jewish mother and a convert can be Jewish. Also, it’s long been thought by many traditional Irish people that it’s the Irish nature of the mother that determines the Irish nature of the child.
The author of the Christian Science Monitor article, Shireen K. Burki , goes on to assert that:
Should Obama become US commander in chief, there is a strong likelihood that Al Qaeda's media arm, As-Sahab, will exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror (read: attacks against fellow Muslims). This perception would be leveraged to galvanize sympathizers into action….
Al Qaeda…has struggled recently to recruit volunteers…. While bin Laden retains significant support as someone willing to stand up for Muslim concerns, most Muslims abhor Al Qaeda's terrorist methods whose primary targets are innocent noncombatants.
But an apostate as head of the United States could change this equation. It would be a propaganda boost for Al Qaeda's mission….
That's why Obama is bin Laden's dream candidate.
This worst-case analysis for a future President Barack Obama, while speculative, should not be entirely dismissed; because Burki has the background and the credentials to be a credible judge of how al Qaeda may use a Muslim apostate’s Presidency to serve their own purposes. Burki “is an adjunct professor of political science….The daughter of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, she spent her childhood in Islamabad, Pakistan, where she studied Islam at school.” Al Qaeda has considerable support in Pakistan, including in Islamabad.
So far, Al Qaeda has been conspicuously quiet on Obama's candidacy. But that should not come as a surprise. Hoping Obama gets elected, they're probably waiting until he's taken the oath of office to begin branding him a traitor to the faith of his fathers.
Yahoo News has picked up the story, and there are already over 600 votes registered there, so I suspect the Obama campaign will need to do more than just let their bloggers respond.
You say it's high-minded. Maybe so. However, it doesn't really dispute what is said in the article, but instead changes the subject to criticize shrub and questions the Christianity of the magazine that published the article. The latter seems like an attempt to smear the messenger to me.
By the way, I resent your assertion that I edited the article in any way.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
A retraction is in order. A deletion would be an admirable move.
This is a radically Conservative diary well to the right of anything we've heard yet this election cycle from Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, etc. This is radically extremist Conservatism.
I can't make you offer a retraction or deletion and won't attempt to. But when we reach the point where fellow Democrats are perpetuating this kind of extremist speech, this kind of bigotry, this kind of fundamentalist apologism, this kind of bald faced fearmongering, well... the plot has been lost. There is no credible conclusion but that this is beyond the pale.
All I'm proposing is that you chalk it up to a temporary error in judgment. Apologize or delete. And we move on like it never happened. It wouldn't be a big deal. All would be forgotten. Or you can let it stand and let it represent you. I'm not demanding censorship. I'm just proposing a dignified out. It's not my character that's at stake here.
the motivations of your enemy?
You are simply reacting emotionally to something that some of us, in looking at the forest for the trees, see as valuable information. Not to slam your candidate, but to know how the enemy will think should he attain the title of POTUS.
It's a preemptive edge. It's taking more than just the surface, "oh, they hate us fer our freedums..." that have been shoveled down our throats for the past 8 years of horror.
Like it or not, admit it or not, this will be used as a recruitment tool among fundamentalist and reactionary factions of Islam. Ignore it at your own peril. It seems to me that O might be wise to pay attention to this little piece of information, that he might deal with it. Or is he, like his followers, too busy on the hope train to deal with the dirty facts of life in the current world of foreign policy? Not everything is about the election you know. This world keeps going on; human nature doesn't really change at all, and terrorism gladly uses any tool it can find in it's kit of recruitment gear. Playing on fundamentalist belief is what they do. You cannot just set information like this aside, pretend it does not exist.
And your post here speaks far more in regard to your own character than it does Mr. Kelly's.
Like you explain so well, Dorma, it's a first principle; and when it comes to recruitment, it really is important. When I read the article, I was immediately reminded of many years ago when the conflict in Ireland was raging and the times I met Irish Republicans who always laughed whenever anyone brought up Ian Paisley and one of his rants against the Pope. Invariably, they would say something like, "No harm will ever come to him. He's the RA's* best recruiter!"
Times have changed, and it's truly great to see that there has been some reconciliation there. But it did not come via anyone putting their heads into the sand.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
* They never said "IRA", just "RA". The I was a given to them.
I'm sorry, this defense doesn't begin to hold water.
Unless you are living in some pre-Modern cocoon, context is paramount. And in this diary, there is no established context.
It takes the Right-most perpective and detaches it from adjudication or valuation. It allows the darkest, most cynical implications and bigotries of the original premise to stand unquestioned and goes even farther by encouraging them. It ignores the fact that the original text is pseudo-history and pseudo-religious interpretation of the most amateur order. And it ignores the fact that the original text is reliant upon multiple hypotheticals and preposterous leaps in logic in order to reach it's dark, cynical conclusions. And worse, it acts as a vehicle for these conclusions. At no point is there any attempt to locate these ideas as outside of decency or outside of logic.
This is the repetition of a text that is flawed factually, historically, historiographically, ethically, and theologically. And you do yourself no favors to defend it as education.
As far reflections on character, I am very comfortable that 99% of Democrats would side with me. I am very well within the majority mores here.
If you want to supply some context, feel free. I don't presume to know what context Senator Obama might want to use to answer that article. I only know that it is troubling, and the little context I offer is to explain why I think it is troubling.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
Contrary to what you allege, the original text seems quite logical to me. What about it do you find illogical?
I am also entirely open to the possibility that the text contains errors of fact. Please refrain from your giddy allegations and tell us what you think they are.
I posted this here, rather than on some more widely read forum because I respect the ability of most posters here to point out errors of fact and logic.
As for your giddy charge that I am somehow "fearmongering", if I have inadvertently caused anyone to be afraid, I apologize. However, I tend to agree with General Clark that we really shouldn't be afraid of al Qaeda. We should get the best possible intelligence we can, and adopt strategies and tactics that bring an end to their campaign against ourselves and our allies.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
website, or the article at the Christian Science Monitor (as well as Yahoo News)?
Are you suggesting that I apologize for posting information here that is posted at Obama's site?
This diary is not right-wing or extreme in any way. It's your hysterical mis-characterization and mis-representation of this diary that is extreme, nocore. I've hyped nothing whatsoever here. I've merely posted a troubling speculation that was already linked at Obama's website.
Are you suggesting that progressives should stick their heads in the sand whenever someone writes an article that may do harm to a progressive candidate? I certainly hope not. I did not do that when the story came up on the Huffington Post about the New York money, and I see no reason to do that now, when the progressive in question is Barack Obama.
It's my view that Obama must respond to this, just as General Clark responded to the Huffington Post story.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
You repeat the premise of a text that is about as historically and logically accurate as Holocaust denial. It is a preposterous bastardization of Muslim theology written by an extremist Neo-Con fearmonger. And you pass it off as educational. This diary reads like the liner notes of a Prussian Blue album.
If it's unclear to you why that's a problem, then I can only suggest that you think it through some more.
bastardizations of Muslim theology? I am no expert on Muslim theology. Far from it. You may be correct that the author is reciting a "bastardization" of such. However, when you call her article "preposterous", I think you've gone too far. It sounds entirely plausible to me - a person who knows quite a bit about how those who inspire terrorist organizations use bastardized religious assertions to motivate and recruit their violent followers. For one example, assertions that the Pope is the anti-Christ, and all Catholics are Satan-worshippers, false though they are, led directly to atrocities such as those committed by the Shankill Butchers.
As for your assertion that the author is a Neo-con, please give us a link to your evidence for that.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
than this kind of anti-Obama comment. You do not help the Clinton candidacy by speaking badly about her opponent.
I know others will disagree with me, but I personally come here to find out what is happening with Clinton and Clark, not Obama.
"It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and one to hear." - Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps you meant this comment to apply to my diary entitled, Obama Campaign To Falsely Claim Clear Majority of Pledged Delegates?
In that diary, I am implicitly accusing Obama, his campaign, and 'his media' of attempting to intentionally mislead the American people. That's not speaking very nicely about him at all.
But in this diary, I say nothing badly about Obama. I merely say that the speculation that his Presidency could help al Qaeda's recruitment efforts is troubling, and that he should respond to that speculation.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
I agree with PA on this one. You know as well as I do that accusing someone by innuendo is just as damaging as an implicit accusation. Earlier in the campaign there were attempts to tag Obama as a Muslim and that didn't work so now we get this.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
I think some of you are reading into this what others don't. I'm not voting for O, but I don't see how this (compared to other stuff that's out there, especially) would cause people not to vote for him. That's just, well...silly.
I see this as preemptive intelligence, something good of which to be aware, and something that further allows us the knowledge of how to deal with the ongoing recruitment by the fanactical factions.
I'm sorry but I don't think something from a single source, a part time political science professor, qualifies as "preemptive intelligence."
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
I sat with about 30 people in a very candid conversation with Richard Clarke.
This is exactly what he spoke about, and this was the first time I had ever heard of the Qods Force.
because she is a single source (thus far) and only a part-time Professor. Wes is sort of a part-time professor, but I wouldn't dare dismiss him for that. Would you?
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
or otherwise?
Frankly, unless you can show exactly where I'm having a seriously prolonged senior moment here and thereby failing to see the accusation you say I am making, it seems to me that you are the one making the accusation by innuendo. You are (by innuendo) accusing me of making an accusation when, in reality, I've made no attempt to accuse anyone of anything in this diary.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
You are spreading stories connecting Obama to Islam. That is pretty obvious.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
Barry my read of the original article is not that Senator Obama is a Muslim, but rather that many/some Muslims will contend that he is whether you and I agree or not. Senator Obama's surrogates have made a big deal how welcome Senator Obama will be in the entire Muslim world. This article indicates that this is not necessarily so.
That's what I got out of it, too.
I'm not qualified to weigh in on the truth of the article -- the extent to which Obama will be seen among Muslim fundamentalists as worthy of death for apostasy. But if it IS true, the claim that Obama would be more welcome in the Muslim world is invalid, and he faces risk from zealots who not only don't care about the consequences, but see themselves as potential martyrs to be revered.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark -- Make America All It Can Be!
The fact the face to face negotiations with Muslim leaders is an integral part of Senator Obama's platform.
And saying that many people will contend that Osama is Muslim is not connecting him with Islam? That logic escapes me.
This article also uses interpretations of Islam that are promoted by the right wing Christian crown to build its case. If you Google "Muslin apostate" and take the time to track down who is behind many of the pages you'll find people like David Horwitz, a backer of right wing causes.
Using a distorted view of any religion in an attempt to gain political advantage is way over the line in my opinion and has no place in US politics.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
"spread" this "story", and why is it OK for it to be linked and responded to at Obama's website, but not here?
Is it your position that anyone who responds to the article in the Christian Science Monitor and/or at Yahoo News is "spreading stories connecting Obama to Islam"? If so, have you told the Obama blogger called Rima (whose entire response is posted here) that she is accusing Obama of being a Muslim by innuendo?
The story in the Christian Science Monitor makes clear that Senator Obama does not consider himself to be a Muslim or to have ever been a Muslim which ought to be good enough for all Americans. It's certainly good enough for me. What part of this don't you understand?
The fact that Senator Obama – the son of a Muslim father – insists he was never a Muslim before becoming Christian is irrelevant to bin Laden.
The problem is not that this article connects Senator Obama to the Islamic faith, but that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda stand to gain in their recruitment efforts if we have a President who they can reasonably portray as an Apostate to their audience. This is something of a departure from conventional thinking which I believe is that a President Obama would help to improve our relationships throughout the Muslim world. Until I read this article, I found myself in general agreement with that conventional thinking. Now, however, I can see that there may be a downside to an Obama Presidency that I had never before even thought of. It is a troubling downside, which is why I posted the article. That enhanced recruitment effect troubles me. Doesn't it trouble you?
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
I don't think its right to have that story linked anywhere. I haven't said a thing to the Obama blogger because I never go to that site. I have enough trouble keeping after my friends here! :)
As I posted in another reply along here someplace that article spreads a distorted view of Islam in much the same way that Bin Laden does. That I object to.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
You must know a lot about Islam to be able to confidently say that the article "spreads a distorted view of Islam".
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
When it comes to a discussion of religion there are often few facts, its just beliefs. I also do not claim to be anything close to an expert on the Qur'an but I can use Google. A search for "Muslin apostate" yields a long list of hits from both right wing Christian groups and those who have turned against Islam.
There are also searchable translations of the Qur'an on line. While searching for anything that implied the death penalty for leaving Islam I found a few interesting things;
"Let there be no compulsion in the religion: Surely the Right Path is clearly distinct from the crooked path." Al Baqarah, 2:256
"Let him who wishes to believe, do so; and let him who wishes to disbelieve, do so." (Al-Kahf: 29)
For something written 12 or 13 hundred years ago that sounds a lot like freedom of religion.
There appears to be one line that implies that the death penalty in the case of murder or treason, but it certainly doesn't include switching religions.
"Whoever kills a person without his being guilty of murder or of creating unrest in the land, is as though he kills the whole of mankind." (Al-Ma’idah, 5: 32)
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
Apostasy carries a death sentence pretty much anywhere in the Muslim world that follows sharia law. That's a fact, not something made up by a Jewish neo-con.
Christianity was the same way until about half a millennium ago.
You might want to read the article from the Council on Foreign Relations I linked to below before you jump to conclusions.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
Will read when time permits. Have important family stuff as priority for several days.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
I know that you proceed rationally, I was just offering some guidance. :)
I had some family stuff last week that keep me out of the loop, that does come first.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
Do you have any references for that statement?
The Taliban certainly agree with your point but they are hardly representative of the general practice. Earlier this month a Sharia court in Malaysia ruled that a woman had the right to renounce her conversion to Islam, without penalty. Malaysian courts may imprison someone born into Islam who converts but they do not kill them. The Council on Foreign Relations has a fairly balanced report on this that you might want to read.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
One country (Malaysia, a non-Arab country trying very hard to move into the modern world with its neighbors) has loosened its standard. Heck, it's being reported by the CFR precisely because it's a significant change. Kind of a "man bites dog" thing.
Note that I didn't say that all Muslim states execute apostates. I said those governed by sharia do.
About the best you can say is that in SOME countries (but NOT Saudi Arabia or Iran where sharia courts are given almost total authority) if an apostate (or his friends) can get enough international attention, secular forces can SOMETIMES get the religious authorities to look the other way, altho often the locals do the dirty work anyway.
Of course I read the article. I agree that Saudi Arabia and Iran (another non-Arab state) are in a league of their own (with Afghanistan, also non-Arab wanting to join that league it seems).
Following Sharia law is not a simple yes/no question anymore than following the Bible is a simple yes/no question. Clearly Saudi Arabia follows the most conservative interpretation of Sharia but one of the neighbors the UAE follows a much more modern interpretation of Sharia, the same is true of many of the Gulf States. Using Saudi Arabia as an example is like using the United States as an example when discussing capital punishment in the west - neither is representative. The Islamic world is too large and diverse for any blanket statement to be applied. Its unfair to paint every Islamic country, or country following Sharia law, with the colors of the most conservative nations in the group.
The senior cleric in Egypt has suggested that punishment for leaving Islam should be left to god, at least implying that the Sharia courts should do nothing. Of course there were those who critisized him in effect calling him an "activist judge."
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
With what you've written here. But go back and compare what you just wrote to your original replies to Nick.
In the earlier posts, you act like capital punishment for apostasy never happens, or almost never, and that the very idea that it does represents a "distorted view" of Islam created by "people like David Horwitz [sic]."
I fully acknowledge that the extent to which Muslim nations are governed by sharia varies. But where sharia courts are in control (like Iran), or given control for whatever reasons (like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan), apostasy still draws a death penalty with very few exceptions. There are also nations mentioned in the article where the government is not strong enough to buck to mullahs and so try to side-step or ignore the problem, like Jordan and a few others.
So there is a direct correlation, not absolute, between the power of sharia and the mullahs to the severity of the punishments (for apostasy as well as across the board). The relatively few cases where the sharia courts have been more lenient are novel enough to warrant notice and, as you say, the judges are considered "activist" and not mainstream.
One more thing, to digress just a little, I never said anything about Arab states. So feel free to include Iran. I do. Altho, that said, I think culture (Arab, Persian, etc) plays a much greater role in most of the barbarity that is usually attributed to Islam as a faith.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
It's good to know what your enemies think, how they think and what motivates them. Knowledge is power.
That something of this nature could be used to ramp up terrorist recruitment is a serious and factual issue. I would think rather than burying ones head in the sand, and seeing this as merely the politics of a campaign season, folks would tug their heads out of the dunes long enough to say, "Well, it's good to know what they're thinking, and maybe we can get closer to the real roots of terrorism, and cut the fundamental recruitment horse off at the pass."
I don't see this as a smear at all; I find it illuminating.
The more you know, you know.
...will make hay with this, whether it's true or not.
Add Rezko, Ayres, Wright, and Obama's propensity to have different views depending on the audience (caught on video of course) ......and you have a prefect storm if unprecedented defeat in November.
"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." JFK
And I hate to sound harsh, but the political reality is that the well intentioned progressives who deny this might as well be Republicans working to ensure the defeat of the Democratic party.
We cannot put a lid on these matters. We cannot bury them. Republicans will use them against us. We must deal with these realities. In the daylight, where all can see.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
In Nick Kelly's post, we read
'Sidenote: That’s sort of the opposite of what I understand to be a Jewish tradition. Namely that only a child of a Jewish mother and a convert can be Jewish.'
There is a big difference between the Jewish tradition and the Moslem one, at least as quoted in the article. In the Jewish tradition, one who is Jewish by birth and then follows a different faith is not a target for murder (although they may be mourned as though dead). But there is no attempt to physically kill them.
That's yet another opposite well worth noting.
Let me add that it's clear to me as a Pagan that religions and cultures which fail to recognize the importance of women (e.g. mothers) seem to be rather more prone to violence than do those that revere the importance of women.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
The main threat of this article is not to the future of our country or even to its national security. It is to Barack Obama's personal safety.
I'll just leave it right there without elaborating.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark -- Make America All It Can Be!
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This story won't stop, and you may be correct, Stan.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
Let me be the first to call this diary disgusting.
This is deeply troubling authorship.
You've taken the very high-minded "response", eliminated the part that denounces the original article as pervetedly barbaric, and then have edited it to read as some deeply bigoted, fearmongering diatribe of the lowest order. This is on par with any of the darkest moments of Karl Rove's demagogic archive. You are acting as waterboy for some very profound darkness.
This is fearmongering at its outermost extreme.
This is a shameful diary. Anyone with any dignity, regardless of the candidate you support, should post in this thread and denounce this.
Certainly both Hillary and Wes would denounce and reject this sort of thing in no uncertain terms. No uncertain terms. This is far, far beyond the pale.
99% of the time, I abstain from posting here. But this diary makes me furious.
This is a Wes Clark website. If nothing else, this is disrespectful to your host.