"Obama tries to put an innocent spin on everything he does, but his leanings toward terrorist sympathizers makes him untrustworthy. He will not get my vote. Lucille, Kansas City, MO"
lucillestandlee@hotmail.com (Friday, October 10, 2008 1:31 AM)
The Obama Spin
FALSIFYING EVIDENCE TO WIN SUPPORT. "Accurate information" and "analyzing issues" are two of many seductive euphemism that deceive the public. Truth and facts matter little. (United Nations and Saul Alinsky strategies) Obama uses these tactics very efficiently.
The Obama Philosophy
"All the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands.."
Obama concedes mistake over Muslim outreach meeting
By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer
“Would a campaign staffer have attended if they were aware of the complete list of attendees? No,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt in an email statement to NBC.
The Muslim outreach meeting
On September 15, newly named Muslim outreach director Minha Husaini spoke to a small group of Muslim leaders and potential Obama supporters at a hotel in Springfield, Virginia, several meeting participants and the campaign said. Two other Obama-affiliated Democratic Party workers joined Husaini and also spoke to the crowd. Some Virginia and Washington, D.C.-based Muslim activists and interested citizens attended, and flyers were passed out from “Arab Americans for Obama” stating Sen. Obama’s goals for achieving peace in the Middle East, protecting the civil liberties of Arab Americans and ending the war in Iraq.
Several participants told NBC News that Husaini and other speakers delivered a standard Obama campaign pitch. “They said, ‘We’re here to get the concerns of Muslim voters and let everyone know that the Obama campaign does want the support of the Muslim community,’ ” recalled one participant, who requested anonymity. The meeting was not advertised and some attendees got text phone messages notifying them that day of the meeting’s location, the participant said.
Nearly a month later, the meeting is drawing controversy--and not because of anything said at the meeting itself.
The attendees
One meeting attendee was Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society, several of the participants said. The MAS website describes Bray as an imam and “long time civil and human rights activist.” Bray’s critics say he has a history of defending terrorists. They point to a video of Bray at a rally in 2000, for example, in which he can be seen pumping his fist in the air in support of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. In a 2004 interview, he called the Israeli assassination of a Hamas spiritual leader an “unlawful, cowardly and dangerous act of state-sponsored terrorism.” Bray did not return a call requesting comment.
Also attending the meeting was Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is a Muslim-American civil rights group that has, as its website states, “consistently and persistently condemned terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.” Nonetheless, the group has many critics, especially in law-enforcement circles, and is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case.
In an interview on Thursday, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said that the group has filed a legal brief seeking to have its name removed from the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the federal terror case. “Obviously we see it as politically motivated and a cheap way to stigmatize” CAIR and other Muslim groups, Hooper said.
Hooper said that CAIR has consistently condemned “every act of terrorism” by groups including Hamas and Hezbollah. But he would not answer whether CAIR condemns those designated terrorist groups themselves. “I’ve already answered your questions,” he said, and abruptly ended the interview. Nihad Awad, the executive director, did not return a call seeking comment.
"Political liability"
A second meeting participant speaking on condition on anonymity said he was stunned to learn that Awad and Bray had been invited to an event where Obama representatives would be present. The participant said Awad and Bray are considered politically “radioactive.” He said that some in the Obama group knew ahead of time that top CAIR officials would be in attendance--an allegation the Obama campaign disputes.
“Yes, when I knew they were coming it made me uncomfortable,” the attendee said. “There was some hope it wouldn’t get out” into the media, the attendee added. “There was some concern within the Obama camp that some of these people coming may be a political liability.”
Chicago-based lawyer Mazen Asbahi also attended the meeting. He is the Obama campaign’s former Muslim outreach coordinator, who abruptly resigned in August after the Wall Street Journal and websites that track fundamentalist Islam began questioning Asbahi’s involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups. When reached by NBC News, Asbahi would not comment about the September gathering or his brief stint eight years ago on an investment fund board which also included a fundamentalist imam.
When informed that Asbahi had attended the recent meeting, an Obama spokesman said: “Mazen Asbahi resigned from his role as the campaign’s Muslim American outreach coordinator and was replaced--he is not an employee of the campaign and does not speak on behalf of the campaign.”
The Obama campaign has been delicately trying to court Muslim American voters in key battleground states while simultaneously knocking down Internet rumors that attempt to link the presidential candidate to radical Islam. Sen. Obama is a Christian.
Obama campaign reaction
The Obama campaign would not allow NBC News to interview its Muslim outreach director, Minha Husaini. It issued a statement explaining that she was not a meeting organizer. “Our campaign has an interfaith outreach organization that is equipping people of faith with the tools they need to educate their friends and family members about Senator Obama’s plans to bring the change we need,” the statement said. “This meeting was not organized by the campaign--our outreach staff attends many meetings in the course of each day, and they accepted an invitation from community leaders to attend.”
Comments
Is this the best you can do?
Lucille, Kansas City, MO
This is insanity.
The US has invaded and continues to occupy two formerly sovereign countries and has positioned a fleet of war ships outside of Iran, a country that has never invaded anyone! Based on the coverage of Iran and their admittedly arrogant President, one would assume that Iran is the most dangerous country in the history of mankind.
What countries has Iran ever invaded?
Why is Iran subject to an entirely different set of rules regarding nuclear power than India, Israel, Pakistan, N. Korea or the United States?
Journalists have a responsibility to tell the truth and hold people in power accountable for their actions.....not to slander people through the use of journalistic conventions.
If the people who are named above have committed a crime, then they should be held accountable. But if they have not, then reporters should stick to the facts instead of contributing to a wave of hateful hysteria that seeks to resolve itself through another 'final solution'. Is this not obvious, Mr. Popkin? Or are you simply waiting until people literally start smashing up Muslim storefronts and force them all to wear red crescent armbands before you take a little responsibility as a journalist with a public voice.
Your article has basically stated that Obama attended a peaceful meeting, with no controversial content, organized by a group of professional activists who persistently renounce terrorism. How, exactly, is this newsworthy story?
Our country is melting down right in front of our eyes and this guy writes about activists at some Muslim outreach meeting! Man, we better get our priorities straight in this country and fast, otherwise there isn't going to be anything left of it.
Totally yellow journalism, trying to find any excuse to stop Obama. Go Obama, Go!! This country needs change.
Rather than focusing on the issues that face us today, we'd rather discuss who did what, with whom, and when, which just seems juvenile. Focus on real solutions, what solutions each candidate actually brings to the table and vote on that.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, quess what it may just be a DUCK!!!!
Since when are American's not accepting of people of different backgrounds and faiths??? Muslim does not mean Terrorist... GET A LIFE.
The way things are going, it seems just being a Muslim disqualifies you from even attending a gathering of political significant, forget about running for any political office. This is what I call disenfranchising the Muslims in America by spooking them.
The western societies are good at saying "never-again" and building memorial museums (slavery, holocast, Japanese encampment) after the fact, yet repeating the same nonsense over and over again.
And to the person who said, "Obama, Osama," I sure hope you are being facetious.
Sat in a Church for 20 years but didn't know Wright was a racist, Did business with Ayers for 15 years but didn't know he was a terrioist. Bought property from Resko but didn't know he was shady. Sent a Director from his campaign to a meeting with Islamic Terriost but didn't know. Seems to me he doesn't know some very important things....or did he and is not being honest! Obama is a dangerous man!
Could it be that the McCain campaign wants a distraction story to cover the release of the official report (not the McCain-Palin campaign "report") on Gov. Palin's Troopergate activities?
Why does the McCain campaign constantly comment on Obama's so-called "palling around" with radical or "non-American" figures and groups, including attendance at (he didn't address this group as he did the AIPAC meeting the DAY AFTER his nomination for President) these Muslim-American groups' meeting?
His attendance at a Muslim-American group meeting is, as everyone knows, CODE for the McCain-Palin campaign's claim that Obama is "not one of us, dangerous" that is--"black."
Of course McCain's dodgy Viet Nam POW record is never mentioned by the Obama campaign. McCain claims to have "tried to commit suicide" over his release of information--to the Viet Cong--of information that he well knew would put his fellow-Americans in the US Air Force in danger of being shot down?
Obama is too much of a statesman to throw that kind of mud.
Why isn't the Keating Five--the S & L scandal that costs the taxpayers billions--and McCain's accepting of lobby money and gifts played up as relentlessly?
Obama is too much of a statesman to descend into that kind of mud-throwing game-pit where Palin and McCain seem to live.
Why has NBC "investigative journalism" previously released news of Obama's attendance at a meeting of moderate Muslim-American groups? Don't they have the right to meet just as Palin's husband and she have a right to attend far-right-wing meetings of Alaska's extremist, secessionist Independence Party meetings?
"Desperate times call for desperate measures." McCain is desperate. In fact, McCain is scared and scary.
Bill and Nancy
I think it wise for Obama to have connections with the Muslim community and to reach out to people of all backgrounds. I'm pretty sure as Christians, that's exactly what we are called on to do. Sure beats the paranoid repressive intolerant approach of the Republican party.
He's made it clear that he does not tolerate or condone violent radicalism.
I wonder how many "undesirables" have attended Republican conventions, fund-raisers, and campaign appearances unbeknownst to the organizers or the other attendees.
Donna
Monroeville, PA
steve (Friday, October 10, 2008 1:19 AM)