Free Republic

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January. The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari...

Why isn't Obama denying Amir Taheri's charges? He admited to it in June to MSNBC! [NOTE: The New York Post's Amir Taheri, in "OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL", "discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq - and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for."] We've discovered an MSNBC article which directly contradicts Obama's defense of his negotiations with the Iraq government....

IN Monday's Post, I discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq - and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for. The Obama campaign has objected. While its statement says my article was "filled with distortions," the rebuttal actually centers on a technical point: the differences between two Iraqi-US accords under negotiation - the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA, to set rules governing US...

The Obama campaign spent more than five hours on Monday attempting to figure out the best refutation of the explosive New York Post report that quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Barack Obama during his July visit to Baghdad demanded that Iraq not negotiate with the Bush Administration on the withdrawal of American troops. Instead, he asked that they delay such negotiations until after the presidential handover at the end of January. The three problems, according to campaign sources: The report was true, there were at least three other people in the room with Obama and Zebari...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yesterday Amir Taheri in the New York Post quoted the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Obama made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July that (paraphrasing) "You guys shouldn't start talking about troop withdrawal now, you should wait 'til the next president's elected." The quote here from the Iraqi foreign minister, "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement on US troop withdrawal until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington. However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates...

Stick a fork in Obama: he's doneThe following is in today's New York Post,. The bottom line is that Barack Obama allegedly attempted to undermine official U.S. policy in Iraq, an action that could have endangered thousands of lives as well as regional peace and security, for his own political benefit. We encourage our readers to circulate this story as widely as possible, because it alone should mean the end of Obama's candidacy. OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL by Amir Taheri WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has...

<p>FLINT, Mich. – Senator Barack Obama said today he intends to visit Iraq and Afghanistan before the November election.</p> <p>Mr. Obama, who spoke to the Iraqi foreign minister by telephone this morning, said he was “encouraged” by the reductions in violence in Iraq. But he said the United States still must begin gradually withdrawing troops, at a pace of one to two brigades a month, with a goal of removing most combat troops in 16 months.</p>

The New York Post is no friend of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Any knock of Obama by its editorial writers and op-ed columnists should be taken with the whole bag of salt. That´s likely the case with this stunning allegation that´s making its way around the internet courtesy of Post Columnist Amir Taheri. He alleges that in a private talk with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari during his visit to Iraq in July, Obama allegedly tried to talk Zebari and other Iraqi leaders into stalling the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. The alleged reason for the...

Barack Obama’s campaign denied a New York Post report Monday that said the Democratic presidential candidate privately tried to persuade Iraqi political leaders to stall an agreement on scaling back American troops in Iraq while publicly campaigning for a speedy withdrawal.Obama’s request for a delay was a major theme of his talks with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview with the Post.Obama also tried to persuade the U.S. commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to offer a “realistic withdrawal date,” the Post reported. The commanders declined, the newspaper said.A top foreign policy...

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview. Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in...

Andrea Mitchell's floating of the Obama-camp accusation that John McCain cheated by overhearing Obama's responses at the Saddleback forum, as NewsBuster D.S. Hube reported, isn't the first time the NBC correspondent has made herself the propagator-in-chief of Obama's conspiracy theories. As NewsBuster Noel Sheppard has noted, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has now written NBC to protest Mitchell's behavior. Here's an excerpt from his letter to NBC News president Steve Capus [emphasis added]: "[I]nstead of taking a critical journalistic approach to this spin, Andrea Mitchell did what has become a pattern for her of simply repeating Obama campaign talking points."...

Senator Obama went to Berlin and told a crowd of 200,000 Europeans that he was speaking to them not as a candidate for President of the United States, but as “a fellow citizen of the world.” He then proceeded to insult the memories of any German over age 30 and the intelligence of every American who remembers what the Berlin Wall was all about. In Berlin, Obama credited the “people of the world” for bringing down the Berlin Wall. That will be surprising news to the people of Mexico, Switzerland and dozens of other nations who not only sat out...

George Clooney once famously declared he could never run for public office because he'd 'slept with too many women, done too many drugs and been to too many parties'. But now the Hollywood heart-throb has entered the political arena at the highest level - by becoming an unofficial advisor to US Presidential front-runner Barack Obama. Oscar-winner Clooney, 47, is said to be helping the Democratic candidate to polish his image at home and abroad.

It is clear that this US presidential election has brought to the surface a bunch of lingering issues inside the country: racial, class and gender stresses. Even more starkly it has rekindled emotions outside the US, affecting how the world views America, from presumably allied countries in Europe to the developing world and, especially the Muslim world. It is amazing how quickly the mind gets cleared of American TV and internet chatter after a business trip to Europe with an added leg in the Middle East. For starters, we may be complaining about the cost of everything in the US,...

Only this time, Barack Obama will be a little less subtle about his purposes. On the second day of the Republican Convention, Obama will do some low-key fundraising … among Hollywood heavyweights … in Geneva, Switzerland. George Clooney will arrange for a $1,000 a plate reception, but that’s just the appetizer: Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month. The event, taking place on the evening of September 2 in Geneva, Switzerland will be split into two parts: a reception and a dinner. According to Obama’s National Finance Committee,...

Sen. Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin may have been a hit with American journalists. That, however, is due to most journalists' politics, not to the profundity of Obama's remarks. They were neither profound nor stirring. Indeed, a careful study of the speech should lead an impartial observer to be concerned about Obama's grasp of the world. I started my analysis last week; I conclude this week. Let me begin with that which was praiseworthy. Obama: "This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and...

AS the presidential candidates enter the three-month sprint to November, Barack Obama must be wondering: If that didn't do it, what will? "That" is his Berlin speech. "It" is assuage anxieties about his understanding of the need to supplement diplomacy with military force. Obama exhorted Germans to be more willing to wage war, in Afghanistan. He was right to do so. But polls taken since his trip abroad don't indicate that Obama succeeded in altering the oddest aspect of this campaign: Measured against his party's surging strength, he's dramatically underperforming. Surely this is related to anxieties about his thin resume...

Most have now heard about the emails from soldiers in the field who were less than impressed by the fact that the Obamessiah failed to grace them with his holy presence. We posted on it yesterday.Well, one of the first emails to travel around the net has now been "recanted" by the sender. The email itself was genuine, but now he is asking that people stop sending it around and posting it. He said it was meant only for his family. The odds are good that what happened was that it got around, and since his name was attached, he...

August 02, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Was Obama’s Bounce a Bubble?Polls continue to show an unstable presidential campaign. By Michael Barone Just when you think you’ve got the presidential race figured out, something comes along to upend your carefully wrought conclusions. Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama’s trip abroad the week of July 21–25 and predicted he would get a bounce in the polls. Some of his supporters believe he has put the election away. Other observers employ the hackneyed and meaningless phrase, “It’s his to lose.” The poll numbers tell a different and more nuanced story. The...

The blast-off didn't materialize, and the Dalibama found his numbers falling in Ohio, Pennsylvania an Florida. Even worse, the late night comics were having a field day with his "inflate your tires, end the energy crisis" pronouncement. Michelle Obama returned to the political lists, and is her habit, she portrayed a grim America the outlines of which just don't register with most voters, even among many of the single moms and working mothers she was appealing to. Mrs. Obama told a crowd she didn't want Obama to run, but then changed her mind: But then I had to take a...