Since yesterday, when John McBOMB’s chief economic adviser, the “Whining” Phil ‘McGramOfPot’ Gramm got thrown under the straight-talk express wreckage, McCain and Bush have been pivoting towards Obama’s positions on Iraq and Afghanistan, shamelessly trying to camouflage their moves with “benchMURK” talking points like a “general time horizon” for withdrawal from Iraq.

   Pic Courtesy: seedsofdoubt.com

Obama has consistently stated that he wants the U.S. to start withdrawing from Iraq for re-deployment in Afghanistan within sixteen months.

As Obama landed in Afghanistan today, the German magazine newspaper “Der Spiegel” reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told them that he supported Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months, essentially endorsing Obama, and slapping Bush upside the head.

al-Maliki said: “U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Asked if he supported Obama’s ideas more than those of John McCain, Republican presidential hopeful, Maliki said he did not want to recommend who people should vote for….”Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems.”

Meanwhile, the White House said on Friday George W. Bush and Maliki had agreed that a security deal under negotiation should set a “time horizon” for meeting “aspirational goals” for reducing U.S. forces in Iraq.

In a speech earlier this week, Obama promised to commit at least two more combat brigades - up to 10,000 men - to Afghanistan, if he wins November’s election. He also said the US military should focus on that country rather than Iraq.

Copycat McCain upped the ante — to 3 brigades. Asked where he would get the troops while bogged in his “100 year Iraq war,” McCain said: “We need to work that out. We need to have greater participation on the part of our NATO allies, as I said in my opening remarks today and we need a lot more help.”

NATO Allies? You mean your cousins in Great Britain?

To the best of my knowledge the Brits are not thrilled at all with this illegal war.

In a campaign stop McCain said: “I know how to win wars. And if I’m elected president, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq.”

And my question is: Which WAR has McCain ever won?

Being caged like an animal in Vietnam — another illegal war that America lost, is not winning, in my opinion.

In Vietnam 2,000,000+ civilian lives were lost, most from South Vietnam. 58,000+ American soldiers also lost their lives in the war.

Just like in Iraq, U.S. military personnel often went on civilian killing rampages — For example:

Nixonian cover-ups and protests followed world wide.

The Vietnam war started because American president Eisenhower did not want “communism to spread throughout the world” and eventually to America. Essentially the U.S. was asked by France, via NATO, to keep the communists from “taking over” the French “Colonial” Territory — Vietnam. A European colonialist (France) asked Neo-European-Colonialist (America) to help it maintain a grip on it’s illegally acquired colony, resulting in Vietnam being split into two, and causing Vietnamese to slit each others throats — just like the Shia and the Sunni have been doing in Iraq — the fruits of an illegal OIL war.

Of late, the U.S has been bribing the Sunnis with the almighty Dollar — hence the “artificial peace.”

“Fear of Communism,”…”Fear of Muslims,”…”Fear of The Obama-Fist-Bump,”…”Fear of Islamo-Fascists,”…”Fear of Black Panthers,”…”Fear of Foreign Languages,”… “Fear of Mexican Immigrants,”…”Fear of a Black President,”…”Fear of Imaginary ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction‘” …RING A BELL?

Lynch them ALL!……AGAIN and AGAIN!

Hallelujah,… Sweet Home Alabama!

That’s what the criminal ‘High Cabal‘ a.k.a The Republican Party has drafted John McCain For — To beat up, lynch, burn, bomb, steal-oil-from and dominate everyone who does not toe the line.

“You are either with us or against us.” — George Bush, November 6, 2001

The world and many Americans are tired of this Moronic Cowboy Republican Dictatorship, and Obama is a much needed fresh face. The whole world is desperately “Clinging To Obama,” and his current tour will only serve to stamp that point.

Contrary to what the right-wing thugs hope — Obama will shine in the Middle-East and in Europe, and will come home fortified and ready to thump McCain’s sorry ass in November — thoroughly well, with or without Hillary Clinton’s racist and un-principled “Angry-White-Whore” army.

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   Pic Courtesy: seedsofdoubt.com

Popularity: 16% [?]

By: KEVIN J KELLEY

Right-wing Christian Activists in the United States are attempting to use Senator Barack Obama’s Kenyan links to discredit him.

Sen. Barrack Obama [L] & Prime Minister Raila Odinga [R]
The activists, most of them conseervative Christians, claim that Mr Obama is a relative of Prime Minister Raila Odinga, whom they describe as a “socialist who plans to introduce Sharia Law in Kenya“.

Mr Obama is leading his party’s presidential nominations and is almost certain to win against Senator Hillary Clinton.

He also stands a good chance against Senator John McCain of the rival Republican Party, thus making history as the first non-white to become a US president.

For the past two decades, American presidential campaigns have been conducted with every aspect of a candidate’s life placed under the microscope.

Analysts expect the Republicans to scour Mr Obama’s Kenyan links to find anything that they can use against him.

Some of the most widely circulated allegations originated last month in a chain e-mail from Celeste Davis, an American Christian missionary who, together with her husband Loren Davis, claims to have worked in Kenya for 12 years.

The Davises allege that Senator Obama donated nearly $1 million (approximately Ksh61 million) to the Orange Democratic Movement’s campaign last year. “Obama and Raila speak daily,” the Davises add, claiming that the two men are cousins.

Bizarre and discredited

Mr Odinga’s spokesman, Mr. Salim Lone, dismissed the allegations as bizarre and discredited.

“These are bizarre accusations that lack credibility. The allegations that the Prime Minister has socialist and pro-Mulism leanings were discussed and discredited in the last campaign,” he said.

“This is the work of right-wing activists who are trying to puncture holes in Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House by attempting to resurrect allegations that were discredited in Kenya during the campaign,” he said.

Nairobi-based political scientist, Tom Wolf, an American, said that the Internet smear campaign against Mr Obama was an act of desperation.

“It just shows how desperate the Republicans are that Obama is viewed as a serious threat that they would have to use such irrelevant campaign tactics. If the Americans were worried, would they be so close to him? You recall that someone tried to use the Somali robes to discredit him,” he said.

If the Cold War were still on and communism were still alive, and Raila had spent a weekend with some communist leader like Fidel Castro, he said, it would be much more of an issue.

“But if you criticise Obama because he is related to a Kenyan leader who arrived at a compromise over the disputed election to save his nation, how would that hurt him?” Mr Wolf asked.

Mr Lone described the e-mail campaign as one of the last gasp efforts by right-wing activists in the US to dent Senator Obama’s campaign to become the Democratic Party’s standard bearer in the race to the White House.

Mr Lone, however, claimed that Mr Odinga and Senator Obama were related by blood and came from the same clan.

“It is true that the Prime Minister and the senator are related. Senator Obama comes from a family and clan to which the Prime Minister’s mother belongs, and they are cousins,” he said.

In the American sense, a cousin is the child of your parents’ siblings. But in Luo culture, the members of your father’s or mother’s clans are your cousins.

A clan would typically have hundreds of thousands of members, and the relationship is more social than biological.

Mr Obama is the son of Barack Obama Sr of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas.

He was raised by his maternal grandparents. In October last year, Mrs Lynne Cheney, wife of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, announced that she had discovered, while researching a book on their family, that Mr Cheney and Mr Obama were blood relatives.

They were eighth cousins, she said, with a common ancestor, a 17th-century immigrant from France.

The Illinois senator is acknowledged as perhaps the most charismatic American politician since John F Kennedy.

December election

Mr Davis and his wife, noting Mr Odinga’s contention that the December 27 presidential voting was rigged, said in their message, “As we watch Obama rise in the US we are sure that whatever happens, he will use the same tactic, crying rigged election if he doesn’t win and possibly cause a race war in America.”

A conservative Internet commentator, Michael Gaynor, speculated earlier this month that Senator Clinton’s campaign might play “the Kenya card” against Mr Obama.

Mr Gaynor says “the Kenya card” involves unspecified connections between the Kenyan-American senator and “the radical Kenyan prime minister.”

An author who succeeded in smearing Democratic Senator John Kerry in the 2004 US presidential race may also make negative use of Senator Obama’s Kenyan heritage.

A February 27 report by the McClatchy-Tribune News Service in the US says that author Jerome Corsi intends to research “Obama’s connections to Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga and Odinga’s ties to Muslim groups.”

Mr Corsi wrote Unfit for Command, a text effectively used by Republican Party partisans seeking to discredit Senator Kerry’s service in the US military during the Vietnam war.

Evidence assembled by Mr Kerry and his supporters showed that these charges were either exaggerated or flatly false.

The Davises’ allegations concerning Senator Obama and Mr Odinga “are all kinds of false,” states an online commentator for The New Republic, a respected US political magazine.

But one effect of the response to the Davises’ lies by so prestigious a magazine will be to call further attention to those lies.

Politifact, a political accuracy check maintained by two reputable and non-partisan publications – The St Petersburg (Florida) Times and Congressional Quarterly – published a detailed rebuttal of the Davises’ claims in a May 2 analysis by researcher Amy Hollyfield.

She quoted Mr Lone as saying: “This is absolutely ridiculous” in regard to the Davises’ claim that a group associated with Senator Obama donated nearly $1 million (Sh62 million) to the ODM campaign. “Mr Obama did not donate a single cent to Mr Odinga’s campaign,” Mr Lone told Politifact.

He said the group the Davises say gave the money to ODM does not exist, Politifact reports, citing several US election campaign monitoring organisations, including one sponsored by the US government.

Politifact also investigated the Davises’ claim that Mr Obama is a cousin of Mr Odinga.

That assertion is based on a BBC interview in January in which Mr Odinga said, “Barack Obama’s father is my maternal uncle.”

The BBC then asked, “You’re related to him?” Mr Odinga replied: “Yes, I am.”

The Obama campaign denies that the senator and Mr Odinga are cousins. And three Kenya experts interviewed by Politifact also dismissed this claim, Ms Hollyfield reports.

Normal sense

“To my knowledge, they are not first cousins in the normal sense,” Kenya election expert Joel Barkan, a professor emeritus at the University of Iowa, told Politifact.

“To my knowledge, there’s absolutely no relationship at all.”

Prof Barkan also took issue with the Davises’ characterisation of Mr Odinga as a “socialist.”

Such a charge is intended to incite still-virulent anti-communist sentiments among many Americans and to suggest that Senator Obama has a sinister, far-left agenda that he is concealing from US voters.

“He’s a populist politician,” Prof Barkan says of Mr Odinga, “but he’s no socialist.”

Because the Davises’ e-mail was written by missionaries long active in Kenya, “it somehow carries more credence than your average blog posting — and it’s spreading rapidly,” Politifact commented.

“But even with the credibility of a real author, the claims in this e-mail are as baseless as anything you’ve read from an anonymous blogger.”

Speaking to the Sunday Nation Saturday, Mr Lone said Mr Odinga and Mr Obama enjoy good relations.

However, Mr Lone was categorical that Senator Obama and the PM have never sat down to discuss their ideological commitments owing to the fact they play politics in different environments.

“Claims that the two have discussed their ideological commitments are completely far-fetched. The senator has Kenyan roots, but he is an American first and foremost,” he said. He further dismissed claims that Senator Obama, or groups connected to him, contributed to Mr Odinga’s campaign kitty, stating that they never received a cent from the Illinois senator.

Mr Davis and his wife claim to have preached among Muslims for 20 years, 12 of them in Kenya.

Their ministry is said to be based in Meru.

The Sunday Nation’s efforts to track them or their Kenyan ministry down Saturday were fruitless by the time of going to press.

REFERENCES:

1. Odinga says Obama is his cousin — Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga has said he is a cousin of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
2. Could US elect a Luo before Kenya? — It is said there is a bitter joke among Kenya’s Luo community that the United States of America will elect a member of their tribe as president before the East African country does.

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