Posted on 08/05/2009 10:05:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last month was not a good month for President Obama. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate would not vote on his controversial healthcare bill before the August recess, federal deficit spending has reached a record $1.8 trillion, one major poll showed his approval rating had dropped below 50 percent, and a growing group of people question his citizenship and therefore his right to be President.
“Birthers” is the label used by those who want to relegate the latter group as a fringe element of society. Many complained last year when they noticed that Senator Obama would not place his hand over his heart while the national anthem was being played, and their concerns were heightened during the election when they noticed that he didn't wear a U.S. flag pin on his lapel, until he finally put one on. When they wanted proof of his birth in Hawaii, he displayed his certificate of live birth on the Internet for all to view.
End of argument, right? Wrong. Last month the “Birther movement” (also tongue-in-cheek known as the Born Identity) gathered more momentum when it burst through the conservative blogosphere and back into mainstream controversy again because a federal judge in Tampa, Florida, denied Stefan Frederick Cook's request to be rehired by Simtech Corporation, an Odessa-based military contractor. Cook claimed the Department of Defense pressured Simtech to fire him.
You see, Mr. Cook is also U.S. Army Major Cook, a reserve soldier who hired an attorney and was granted a request to not deploy to Afghanistan because he believes President Obama's presidency is not legitimate because he is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. Cook believes he would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the U.S. under Obama's command, which would subject him to possible prosecution as a war criminal.
Cook was represented by attorney Orly Taitz, who states that he is not refusing to go to Afghanistan because he is afraid to fight. In fact, Taitz says that Cook is ready to go today if it can be proved that President Obama is a legitimate commander in chief. She has dozens of other members of the military waiting for her to represent them in similar cases.
Because of the recent surge in the number of inquiries about the birthplace of Obama, Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino recently reissued a statement that he was born in Hawaii, and his certificate of live birth can be seen on the Internet. However, that's not good enough for the Birthers who want to see the long form of the birth certificate that states the hospital and other details, because no hospital in Honolulu has any record of his birth.
I had not put much thought or time into the Birthers' argument, but decided to do some research after it became a public issue again. Instead of finding more answers, my research only raised more questions. Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas in 1942, which makes her a U.S. citizen. She married Barrack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan native who was a British subject, whose citizenship status was governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948, which would have allowed Obama Jr. to have dual citizenship.
After Obama's parents divorced, his mother later married an Indonesian businessman, Lolo Soetoro, and she moved with her son to Indonesia in 1966 or 1967. She became an Indonesian citizen and Obama was allegedly adopted by Soetoro, took on the name of his stepfather, and was registered in school documents as Barry Soetoro. His mother divorced for the second time and Obama moved back to Hawaii with his mother and half-sister at the age of 10. By the way, his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, but some claim she also possesses a certificate of live birth from Hawaii.
The smoking gun in this whole scenario is not whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya, but it may boil down to a trip Obama took to Indonesia and Pakistan in the summer of 1981 with a Pakistani friend, Wahid Hamid, who attended Occidental College with him. Obama fails to mention the trip in either of his books, but he did discuss the trip to Pakistan during a speech in San Francisco on April 6, 2008. Obama's campaign press secretary, Bill Burton, confirmed the visit to Pakistan in 1981 on his return from Indonesia, so it is well established that he made the trip.
What makes this so interesting is that the U.S. State Department had Pakistan on a “no travel” list in 1981. Pakistan was under martial law at the time and Americans were prohibited from entering the country. A U.S. passport would not have allowed him to enter Pakistan, but the country accepted an Indonesian or British passport at that time. So the question is: If he could not use a U.S. passport, what passport was Obama offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration on his trip as a young college student?
There are only two possibilities: 1) If he used a British passport it would provide proof that he was either born in Kenya, as the Birther's claim, or he accepted the citizenship of his Kenyan father; or 2) if he was traveling with an Indonesian passport, that would tend to prove that he was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather in 1967, and he relinquished whatever citizenship he held, American or British.
This bizarre supposition and its implications would be excellent fodder for a future Tom Clancy or Dan Brown novel. The President could summarily dismiss all of these accusations by simply showing his long form birth certificate, passports, visas, and college records (some believe he received aid as a foreign student). However, President Obama has refused to share the documents and he has purportedly spent over a million dollars with three law firms in an effort to thwart court attempts to reveal the documents. If he has nothing to hide, I hope for his benefit and the sake of the country that he shows the documents so the whole ordeal can be put to rest. Until he does, the Born Identity movement will not only grow larger, but it could threaten to derail his credibility with many of the American people.
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Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is a partner with BizResults, LLC (www.bizresults.org). They can be contacted at biz_results@yahoo.com.
The smoking gun in this whole scenario is not whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya, but it may boil down to a trip Obama took to Indonesia and Pakistan in the summer of 1981 with a Pakistani friend, Wahid Hamid, who attended Occidental College with him.
Obama fails to mention the trip in either of his books, but he did discuss the trip to Pakistan during a speech in San Francisco on April 6, 2008. Obama's campaign press secretary, Bill Burton, confirmed the visit to Pakistan in 1981 on his return from Indonesia, so it is well established that he made the trip.
What makes this so interesting is that the U.S. State Department had Pakistan on a “no travel” list in 1981. Pakistan was under martial law at the time and Americans were prohibited from entering the country. A U.S. passport would not have allowed him to enter Pakistan, but the country accepted an Indonesian or British passport at that time. So the question is: If he could not use a U.S. passport, what passport was Obama offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration on his trip as a young college student?
There are only two possibilities:
1) If he used a British passport it would provide proof that he was either born in Kenya, as the Birther's claim, or he accepted the citizenship of his Kenyan father;
2) if he was traveling with an Indonesian passport, that would tend to prove that he was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather in 1967, and he relinquished whatever citizenship he held, American or British.
“Then too — if the left thought the US was unpopular with “Cowboy Diplomacy,” just imagine how unpopular we’ll be when we eject a black muslim president.”
As the Bamster is removed from the White House, will someone please call the Whaaambulance for those on the Left? Please - all those untreated Leftists thrashing around in Bamster Withdrawal Syndrome would be an ugly scene to behold.
And, all that Leftist drool on the sidewalks would be a health risk.
That was undisputedly the case right up to the 14th Amendment, which extended the rights and obligations of citizenship to former slaves. It actually still is the case, but those who would prefer to open the Presidency to naturalized citizens have seized upon language of the 14th, never intended to have any impact upon Constitutional language elsewhere, dealing with qualifications for President. So, Obama is in murky territory at best, as far as being qualified and eligible for office. And, under the meaning of the term natural born citizen intended by the Founders, he's not now and never has been eligible, due to the circumstances of his birth to a nonresident alien father.
This is the first article about this subject that I have ever seen that is comprehensive and logical and balanced.
I now see why the questions that have been bubbling and bubbling have continued to gather strength.
“It will be interesting to see if any US media outlets publish this.”
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If any do publish it, it will show they have the same low journalistic standards as World Net Daily. For the umpteenth time, but (ALAS!) not the last time, THERE WAS NEVER ANY BAN ON TRAVEL TO PAKISTAN!
1981 NYTimes travel section article on travel to Pakistan:
Letter by U.S. Consul welcoming visitors to Pakistan:
U.S. State Dept. advisory on 30-day tourist visas available at Pakistan airport:
http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/travel/cis/southasia/TA_Pakistan1981.pdf
Which means that the authors are either lazy, stupid, or liars. Or some combination thereof. BTW, even World Net Daily has been slowly backing away from the “travel ban” story.
You can shout that out all you want, Bob. My post did not address the accuracy of the article, just whether or not it would be published stateside.
You should post your links to someone on this thread who accepts the Pakistan part of the article.
Blithering idiot alert!
There was no ban on travel to Pakistan by US passport holders in 1981. Here is some advice given in August of 1981 by the US Consul in Lahore:
One of the pleasures of the Foreign Service is being able to serve in cities like Lahore, and I would welcome an influx of Americans who might have been inspired to come by Barbara Crossette's piece, ''Lahore, a Survivor With a Bittersweet History'' (Travel Section, June 14).But please caution them.
While tourists can obtain a free, 30-day, non-extendable visa to Pakistan at the Wagah border crossing (on the rail route from New Delhi to Lahore), tourists cannot make the reverse journey from Pakistan to India through the same crossing unless they already have an Indian visa. The Indians only offer this service, so far as I know, to tourists debarking at airports. We have had a number of Americans stranded in Lahore who did not know this, and they tend to be too discouraged to enjoy the city. JOHN S. BRIMS, United States Consul General, Lahore, Pakistan
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