CrossPosted @ Voices in the Wilderness

Barack Obama seems to be a little confused in regards to his foreign policy vise a vie talking to "terrorist". He laid out, over the past few months, what amounts to the most inconsistent and incoherent policy as it relates to Iran. He has been, in recent weeks, condemning Hamas while constantly putting forward the idea of direct negotiations with Iran. That doesn't seem problematic until you add his other beliefs into the equation. He said in a recent speech condemning comments made by George Bush during a celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary of statehood that Iran was financially backing Hamas, and by proxy, its attacks against Israeli civilians.

Read on...

Jamie Rubin should learn to shut up. He stated Kerry's position on AUMF  that Kerry would have voted the way he did  'knowing what we know now" in 2004. Now he is providing truncated quotes about McCain's position on Hamas. the only problem is that he got Obama to repeat that and now the whole story turns up. A good way to discredit the presumptive nominee!

Unforced errors tend to do in campaigns...

Two years ago, in an interview with James Rubin for Sky News, Sen. John McCain expressed a willingness to negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas -- the very group that McCain has been relentlessly using to smear Sen. Barack Obama over the last several weeks.

Rubin has written an op-ed in Friday's Washington Post about his exchange with McCain, and The Huffington Post has obtained exclusive video. Here's the key excerpt:

RUBIN: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCAIN: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

You can watch the video of the exchange over at HuffPo. Suffice it to say that this one stings for the McCain campaign, both because of the nature of the major flub and because it's not the first time that the candidate's words have come back to bite him. In fact, it has become quite common with McCain to act like he is holier than now, whether on Iraq or campaign finance or some other issue, only to be outed not only as fallible, like any other human (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but also as cynical, hypocritical, conniving, and overly ambitious -- in other words as just the kind of power-hungry career politician willing to say anything in the hopes of winning an election that Americans hate (which is not such a good thing).

On the issue of Hamas, in particular, because this exchange between Rubin and McCain was caught on tape and it isn't ancient history (just three years ago), this line of attack is now off the table for McCain and the hard right. They simply have no credibility on the issue. What's more, by harping on Hamas from here on out, those on the right would only serve to remind Americans a) that McCain will flip-flop his positions for political convenience, and b) that McCain was recently in favor of reaching out to Hamas. To this end, it's hard for me to think of anything else that could have emerged on this topic that could have been more detrimental to McCain.

So, John McCain claims Hamas wants Barack Obama elected our next President.

Never mind that the political advisor to Hamas who remarked how he, "liked Barack Obama," could have been saying so because he knew it to be a political kiss of death and therefore John McCain NOT Barack Obama would ascend to this country's highest office.

Never mind as well that Hamas is a foreign organization and therefore its "opinion" is as functionally relevant as the opinion of... say... the society of ticket-takers at Euro-Disney.

We won't really know the motivations or mental gyrations of the entity that is Hamas, but apparently John McCain is willing to speculate for his own political gain.

And if John McCain thinks it fair to project endorsements onto anthropomorphized entities, he shouldn't mind when I suggest... CANCER would prefer he was the next POTUS.

Picture this story a week before election day in November.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo rld/us_and_americas/us_elections/article 3897414.ece

May 10, 2008

One of Barack Obama's Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas - prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him.

Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama's Middle East advisory council.

"I've never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people," he added.

Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama, responded swiftly: "Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future." The rapid departure of Mr Malley followed 48 hours of heated clashes between John McCain, the Republican nominee-elect, and Mr Obama over Middle East policy.

Mr Obama, who has been trying to assuage suspicion towards him among the influential Jewish and pro-Israel lobby, spoke at a Washington reception marking the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence on Thursday when he promised that his commitment to the country's security would be "unshakeable". However, Mr McCain has high-lighted the Democrat's pledge to negotiate directly with nations such as Iran - whose leaders talk of wiping Israel off the map - and a statement from Hamas saying that it hoped that Mr Obama would win the presidency.

This was denounced as an offensive smear by Mr Obama, who repeated earlier statements saying that Hamas was "a terrorist organisation [and] we should not negotiate with them unless they recognise Israel, renounce violence".

He went on to suggest that Mr McCain's attack showed that he was "losing his bearings". This remark triggered a furious reaction from Mark Salter, the Republican's senior adviser, who said that Mr Obama was "intentionally raising John McCain's age as an issue" - a claim the Democrat vehemently denied. The intensity of this dispute reflects both Mr Obama's desire to move beyond his battle with Hillary Clinton and how Republicans are already beginning to train their sights on him.

The Republican National Committee has amassed a 1,000-page dossier on Mr Obama, with researchers spending weeks in Chicago seeking fresh material. He is already being criticised for his links with Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor who has branded Israel an "apartheid system in creation".

Mr Malley, a respected commentator on Middle Eastern issues and part of President Clinton's negotiating team at the Camp David talks, has come under attack in recent months from right-wing bloggers. Yesterday, asked if Obama campaign was aware of his contact with Hamas, he said: "They know who I am but I don't think they vet everyone in a group of informal advisers."

Randy Scheunemann, Mr McCain's foreign policy chief, suggested that Mr Malley was part of an emerging pattern in which other advisers had been repudiated after throwing confusion over policies on trade and Iraq. "Perhaps because of his inexperience Senator Obama surrounds himself with advisers that contradict his stated policies," he said.

This news was relayed by Muzzlewatch this morning. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that:

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Jimmy Carter. This is a man that has consistently tried to do what others in the political arena seem unable to do, and that is to live up to their own expectations, regardless of the political costs. His recent trip to the Middle-East was Carter at his finest. While he understood all to well that the compromised, immoral regimes of both Israel and Washington did not support his mission and were unlikely to approve anything that came out of his meetings with Hamas, he chose to go in order to illustrate to the world what these two governments are really about. I believe Carter was successful in illustrating that neither America nor Israel want to pursue a realistic solution for peace. If anything, his visit proved once again, that Israel seeks not peace, but capitulation.

Every week or so, Obama supporters try to spin their paper-tiger candidate's inability to close the deal with big states as irrelevant and surmountable.

The events of past 6 weeks have exposed Obama as a political lightweight without a clear strategy to accept the gift of presidency that is waiting for Democrats in November. If his single-issue platform isn't cause for concern then consider his troubling ties to known terrorists (Ayers), bigots (J. Wright), and charlatans (Al Sharpton).

Obama is marching the Democratic Party off the cliff and the so-called "young, first-time voters" (who are the most unreliable voting bloc) have buttressed this campaign from the outside, with no clear commitment to the Democratic Party. They just "like the guy."