Obama’s Wars ARE Illegal

By Marjorie Cohn, afterdowningstreet

President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize nine days after he announced he would send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. His escalation of that war is not what the Nobel committee envisioned when it sought to encourage him to make peace, not war.

In 1945, in the wake of two wars that claimed millions of lives, the nations of the world created the United Nations system to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The UN Charter is based on the principles of international peace and security as well as the protection of human rights. But the United States, one of the founding members of the UN, has often flouted the commands of the charter, which is part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

Although the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was as illegal as the invasion of Iraq, many Americans saw it as a justifiable response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The cover of Time magazine called it "The Right War." Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war but escalating the war in Afghanistan. But a majority of Americans now oppose that war as well.

The UN Charter provides that all member states must settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and no nation can use military force except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council. After the 9/11 attacks, the council passed two resolutions, neither of which authorized the use of military force in Afghanistan.

“Operation Enduring Freedom” was not legitimate self-defense under the charter because the 9/11 attacks were crimes against humanity, not “armed attacks” by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after 9/11, or President Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The necessity for self-defense must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the UN General Assembly.

Bush's justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was harboring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists, even though bin Laden did not claim responsibility for the 9/11 attacks until 2004. After Bush demanded that the Taliban turn over bin Laden to the United States, the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan said his government wanted proof that bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks before deciding whether to extradite him, according to the Washington Post. That proof was not forthcoming, the Taliban did not deliver bin Laden, and Bush began bombing Afghanistan.

Bush’s rationale for attacking Afghanistan was spurious. Iranians could have made the same argument to attack the United States after they overthrew the vicious Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979 and the U.S. gave him safe haven. If the new Iranian government had demanded that the U.S. turn over the Shah and we refused, would it have been lawful for Iran to invade the United States? Of course not.

When he announced his troop “surge” in Afghanistan, Obama invoked the 9/11 attacks. By continuing and escalating Bush’s war in Afghanistan, Obama, too, is violating the UN Charter. In his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama declared that he has the "right" to wage wars "unilaterally.” The unilateral use of military force, however, is illegal unless undertaken in self-defense.

Those who conspired to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people on 9/11 are guilty of crimes against humanity. They must be identified and brought to justice in accordance with the law. But retaliation by invading Afghanistan was not the answer. It has lead to growing U.S. and Afghan casualties, and has incurred even more hatred against the United States.

Conspicuously absent from the national discourse is a political analysis of why the tragedy of 9/11 occurred. We need to have that debate and construct a comprehensive strategy to overhaul U.S. foreign policy to inoculate us from the wrath of those who despise American imperialism. The "global war on terror" has been uncritically accepted by most in this country. But terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. One cannot declare war on a tactic. The way to combat terrorism is by identifying and targeting its root causes, including poverty, lack of education, and foreign occupation.

In his declaration that he would send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, Obama made scant reference to Pakistan. But his CIA has used more unmanned Predator drones against Pakistan than Bush. There are estimates that these robots have killed several hundred civilians. Most Pakistanis oppose them. A Gallup poll conducted in Pakistan last summer found 67% opposed and only 9% in favor. Notably, a majority of Pakistanis ranked the United States as a greater threat to Pakistan than the Taliban or Pakistan’s arch-rival India.

Many countries use drones for surveillance, but only the United States and Israel have used them for strikes. Scott Shane wrote in the New York Times, “For the first time in history, a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out a military mission, selecting people for targeted killings in a country where the United States is not officially at war.”

The use of these drones in Pakistan violates both the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit willful killing. Targeted or political assassinations—sometimes called extrajudicial executions—are carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework. As a 1998 report from the UN Special Rapporteur noted, “extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war.” Willful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, punishable as a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act. Extrajudicial executions also violate a longstanding U.S. policy. In the 1970s, after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed that the CIA had been involved in several murders or attempted murders of foreign leaders, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. Although there have been exceptions to this policy, every succeeding president until George W. Bush reaffirmed that order.

Obama is trying to make up for his withdrawal from Iraq by escalating the war on Afghanistan. He is acting like Lyndon Johnson, who rejected Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s admonition about Vietnam because LBJ was “more afraid of the right than the left,” McNamara said in a 2007 interview with Bob Woodward published in the Washington Post.

Approximately 30% of all U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have occurred during Obama’s presidency. The cost of the war, including the 30,000 new troops he just ordered, will be about $100 billion a year. That money could better be used for building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and creating jobs and funding health care in the United States.

Many congressional Democrats are uncomfortable with Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. We must encourage them to hold firm and refuse to fund this war. And the left needs to organize and demonstrate to Obama that we are a force with which he must contend.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent. Her anthology, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, will be published next year by NYU Press.

`A Visit from St. Obama'

By Dave Lindorff (with apologies to Clement Clark Moore)

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land
Not a creature was stirring in Afghanistan.
The bedrooms were bunkered with piles of hard stones
To protect from attacks by the Predator drones.
The children were huddled, afraid, in their beds
While visions of night raiders danced in their heads.

Mama doffed her hijab and I doffed my hat
And we both settled down for a rest and a chat
When out in the yard their arose such a clatter,
I sprang to the door to see what was the matter.
Away to the entrance I ran ‘cross the floor,
Pulled on the handle and opened the door.

The moon hadn’t risen but up in the air
A chopper was shining a light. Such a glare!
And what to my wondering eyes did appear
But a whole gang of men, armed and dressed in black gear.
With a tall skinny guy who was wearing a pistol,
I knew in a flash: it was General McChrystal.

More rapid than eagles his raiders they rushed
And they grabbed me and trussed me and kicked, hit and pushed.
“Frisk him! Blindfold him! Remove him! Get going!
And tear up his household! See what he’s not showing!”
They frightened my wife and my kids just for kicks,
And slaughtered my goats and a half dozen chicks.

Then away they transported me up in the air
To a far-off location and I still know not where.
They duct-taped my eyes and my arms and my feet,
And left me alone in a room with no heat.

That was a Christmas some four years ago,
And I’ve been in this hellhole so long I don’t know
What my hometown still looks like. I hear it’s all rubble,
From air-raids and car bombs and other such trouble.

But yesterday morning I was told by a guard
That I’m going home soon and should not take it hard.
It was all a mistake, they just had the wrong chap, and
Since my name is Achmed, well, “These things can happen.”
Now I hear that the head of the American nation,
Obama, has ordered an Afghan escalation.
He’s sending another 34,000 men
To ramp up the effort to “help us”...again.

In the spirit of the season, he said, by the way,
That the first of these new troops will arrive Christmas Day!
This Nobel Peace Prize winner thinks it’s just great
To unleash these new killers on that special date.

He and McChrystal both claim this invasion
Is to make us all safer and to build us a nation.
But how can that be when they’re raiding our houses,
and bombing our weddings and scaring our spouses?

You attack us with drones that kill innocents daily
Send out death squads to hunt us, and lock us to jail
Leaving families to worry if we’re even living,
While you torture us, starve us and then want forgiving

When it turns out, as with me, you got the wrong guy.
And meanwhile our families were left there to die
Because no one’s around to earn money for bread.
And you wonder why people want Talibs instead?

You say you have brought us democracy? Right!
If a corrupt drug cartel counts, then maybe you might
Have a point. But I think that Karzai and his kin
Are much closer to gangsters than they are to Abe Lincoln.

Merry Christmas America! Happy New Year!
Enjoy your days off. We’re in hell over here.
But I think you will find, as this old year is ending,
That your President’s “good” war is only beginning.

____________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). HIs work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

U.S. Airmen Exercise In Israel For Middle East, Africa Missions

US WMD treaty biological (nuclear and chemical weapons) violations

U.S. Airmen Exercise In Israel For Middle East, Africa Missions

United States European Command
December 11, 2009


Ramstein Airmen train in Israel
Airman 1st Class
Alexandria Mosness
86th Airlift Wing
Public Affairs

-"This is a great training opportunity as the environment has similarities to
where we would deploy to, such as Africa or the Middle East."

NEVATIM AIR FORCE BASE, Israel: It's not every day you get to see an American
flag flying next to the Israeli flag, but during a 10-day training and exercise
mission here, it was common to see Airmen walking around with not only the
American flag on their shoulder but also the Israeli national flag.

Members from Ramstein Air Base in Germany participated in the exercise Dec. 1-10
to accomplish various training requirements for the C-130J Super Hercules which
are not allowed in Germany because of country regulations.

"Training is hard to achieve in Germany because of the air space restrictions,"
said Capt. Sarah Santoro, 37th Airlift Squadron mission commander for the Israel
off-station training. "Some of the things we were able to accomplish in Israel
were dirt landings and low-level flying. This is a great training opportunity as
the environment has similarities to where we would deploy to, such as Africa or
the Middle East."
....
"Many of the pilots had never done a dirt landing, so they were excited to have
the chance," Santoro said.

Since the arrival of the first J-model aircraft to Ramstein in April, the 37th
AS has continued to build on their familiarity with the airplane.

"We are a young squadron new to the J-model, and we are continually building
experience for our pilots and crews," the captain added.

From the 37th AS to the 86th Operations Support Squadron, the 86th Maintenance
Squadron to the 435th Contingency Response Group, many Ramstein units
participated in the exercise.

More than 100 people participated in the training, each contributing their part
to the mission.
....
While in Israel, many of Airmen were also able to work closely and build
partnerships with the Israeli military members, something which many said was a
highlight of their trip.

"The Israelis were eager to host us as they are supposed to be getting J-models
in the near future," Santoro said. "They seem impressed with the airplanes...."

Not only did the airmen take away knowledge from their Israeli counterparts, but
the Israelis were also able to learn a great deal.

"Working with the Americans has been a great opportunity and learning experience
for us," Israeli Air Force Reserve Warrant Officer Amit Ronen said. "It has
allowed us to see what we will be working with in the future. We have also been
able to see how Americans work with the aircraft, and show them the way we do
things."

Source: http://www.eucom.mil/english/fullstory.asp?art=

US rushing troops, supplies to Afghanistan: admiral

Afghan Villagers get a taste of USSA Democracy

Top Military Commander: 16,000 U.S Troops Given Afghan War Orders

Muslims in the US military experience “horrible” discrimination

Muslim radicalisation gains momentum in US

Is Obama Literally "America's First Jewish President"?

by Henry Makow, Ph.D.

(Baruch Obama's grandfather, Stanley "Dunham")

If you google "America's First Jewish President," you'll find links to dozens of stories in Jewish publications "kvelling" (yiddish for boasting) about how Barack Obama was sponsored by Jews and is "one of us." This may be literally true. I suspect his mother's father Stanley "Dunham" was Jewish. Obama's mother "Stanley Anne Dunham" certainly looked and acted like a Communist Jew.

As we have seen, the modus operandi of the Satanic Sabbatean Frankist cult (Illuminati) is to intermarry and impersonate all other religions, ideologies and nationalities. Reinhard Heydrich's grandfather was Jewish. Hitler's grandfather was Jewish. Churchill's mother was half-Jewish. Sonya Sottomayer parades as a "Latina" but her mother was Jewish. It wasn't just Jewish actors in Hollywood who changed their name and their persona. The object is power to create divisions, chaos and war, to degrade Western civilization and bring about the New (Communist, some say Jewish) World Order.

To call Barrack Obama "America's First Jewish President" is disingenuous. Many other presidents are rumored to have had Jewish blood: Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson and the Bushes to name a few. So it's not surprising to read in Wikipedia that, Stanley Dunham, a lowly furniture salesman from Kansas was related to six US Presidents.

"Stanley Armour Dunham's distant cousins include six US presidents: James Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. [19] Through a common ancestor, Mareen Duvall, ...Stanley Dunham is related to former Vice-President Dick Cheney (an eighth cousin once removed).[2] Through another common ancestor, Hans Gutknecht, ...Stanley Dunham is President Harry S. Truman's fourth cousin, twice removed."

Wikipedia waxes on about Stanley's "Irish" antecedents but my Jew-dar is not buying it. In contrast to her husband, non-Jew Madelyn Payne Dunham is related to no Presidents.

Other suspicious clues. Stanley's mother Ruth Lucille Armour committed suicide when Stanley
Stanley Dunham and his wife Madelyn (not Jewish) raised Barrack from age 10 in Honolulu in the 1970's. Although Madelyn didn't have a university degree, she became Vice-President of a bank. Barrack was raised as a "Unitarian" which like Freemasonry and Judaism, doesn't require members to believe in God. It is yet another stalking horse for the NWO.

Obama's mother, "Stanley Anne", became a Communist and fought the "Establishment" not realising the Communists ARE the Establishment. She allowed a Communist degenerate Frank Davis to take pornographic pictures of her, which are on the Internet. (Google Images) Davis boasted of bedding white women and some believe Davis is Obama's real father. Certainly Barack Obama Sr. didn't waste any time abandoning mother and son.

"Stanley Anne" was an "idealistic" part-Jewish woman who got her Ph.D. and worked for Timothy Geitner's father in Indonesia at the elite Ford Foundation. Some suspect she did double time for the CIA.

ROTHSCHILD'S CHOICE

My interest in Obama's antecedents was piqued by Texe Marr's new DVD about Barack Obama called "Rothschild's Choice." Packing the punch of an old fashioned sermon, this DVD demonstrates convincingly that Barack Obama's role is to roll America into a Jew World Order. Anyone wishing to understand "anti-Semitism" need go no further than this video which I recommend to Jews and non-Jews alike. It's a disgrace that America has produced only a handful of courageous and effective defenders like Texe Marrs.

Although Jews make up no more than 2.5 % of the US population, Marrs shows how Jews (and Israel) dominate business and government, not to mention entertainment to the detriment of Americans. The recent credit crisis is portrayed as outright theft from the US taxpayer by Jewish bankers. Although I considered myself well versed on the subject, the video contained a lot of new information. For example I wasn't aware that the whole American Black leadership are Prince Hall Masons like Barack Obama, and therefore instruments of the Illuminati Jewish bankers.

The list includes NY Governor David Paterson, Jesse Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, Louis Farackhan, Al Sharpton., Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Kweisi Mfume and entertainers like Count Basie and Nat King Cole.

This is just an indication of how the Illuminati Bankers have used Freemasonry to infiltrate and control virtually everything. Yet you don't hear Texe Marrs fulminating against Freemasons or Blacks. He makes passing criticism of Christian pastors who are traitors. But the viewer comes away hating all Jews regardless of whether they play an active, passive or no role whatsoever.

The Illuminati Jews are not Jews. They are Satanists who mix breed with other generational Satanists. They have usurped the leadership of Jews in the same way as they have usurped the leadership of Blacks, Christians, Americans and Europeans in general. We are all equally culpable.

Jews who want no part of the Jew World Order must distinguish themselves from the Illuminati Jews and their Masonic lackeys. Texe Marrs should also make this distinction. He is playing into the hands of the Illuminati bankers who want to polarize America and divert anger against innocent Jews and away from themselves and their factotums.

At the same time, Jews have been willfully indifferent to the rising tide of anti-Semitism and the legitimate reasons for it. Those I know want no part of world domination but they are too busy with their personal lives to investigate. Unless they join the battle against the subversion of Western civilization, people will assume they are part of it. While the Canadian Jewish Congress tries to silence me, I have had little to no response from Jews. Perhaps they think they can keep their heads down and benefit from the evil dispensation that has descended upon us.

'CHANGING THE WORLD'

It is a tragedy that mankind's collective and idealistic impulses have been co-opted by the Illuminati bankers and used to increase their power and wealth. "Equality" and "social justice" are ruses to cover their real agenda: the reduction of the human race to the status of worker-consumer drones. Now, they are taking our racial, religious, national and gender identity. Eventually they will take our freedom and property. Perhaps then, too late, we'll get the message. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are genuine. (But they don't represent ordinary Jews.)

Marrs shows how the mass media has given him the aura of an anti-Christ. He is the instrument for a major historical transformation. The Illuminati is putting humanity into a permanent trance.

"Reform," "Progress" "Changing the World" all mirror Lucifer's rebellion against God and the salutary natural and spiritual order of the universe. They are constructing an alternate reality which turns truth and justice on their head. Increasingly, the real world resembles the surreal sexual, trivial, violent world portrayed on TV and in Hollywood movies. They are writing the script, and the epitaph for civilization.

http://www.henrymakow.com/is_obama_literally_americas_fi.html

Obama, Brzezinski, and the Neolib-Neocon Family Feud

Let’s call Barack Obama what he is—a sock puppet for the ruling elite. Obama made this plainly obvious recently when he tabbed Zbigniew Brzezinski as his top foreign policy adviser. In addition to his affiliations with the Council on Foreign Relations (as director), the Trilateral Commission, and the National Endowment for Democracy, Brzezinski was the architect of Carter’s Afghanistan policy, that it to say he is responsible for killing thousands of innocents and organizing the Afghan Arabs, later to become “al-Qaeda.” It is said David Rockefeller asked Brzezinski to create the Trilateral Commission and details were hammered out at Rockefeller’s Pocantico Hills estate outside New York City. Rockefeller later introduced the idea to the Bilderberg group in Knokke, Belgium in the spring of 1972.

As author Holly Sklar has noted, in “1973 the Trilateral Commission was founded by David Rockefeller, Chase Manhattan Bank chairman, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security advisor, and other like-minded ‘eminent private citizens.’ Some 300 members (up from about 200 members in 1973) are drawn from international business and banking, government, academia, media, and conservative labor. The Commission’s purpose is to engineer an enduring partnership among the ruling classes of North American, Western Europe, and Japan—hence the term ‘trilateral’—in order to safeguard the interests of Western capitalism in an explosive world. The private Trilateral Commission is attempting to mold public policy and construct a framework for international stability in the coming decades. Throughout this book, ‘trilateralism’ refers to the doctrine of world order advanced by the Commission” (Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, Edited by Holly Sklar, South End Press, 1980).

“Upon reading the 1970 book Between Two Ages, David Rockefeller lured its writer, Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, away from Columbia University to become the Chairman and co-founder of the Trilateral Commission,” writes Eric Barger (The New World Order Under Clinton: Establishment Insiders and Political Deceit, The Christian World Report, May 1993, pg. 7.) “Brzezinski, who later became the mastermind of Jimmy Carter’s foreign affairs and national security blunders, is still looked to as a policy guru by the liberal media today. Using the same socialist mindset, objectives and premise as the CFR, the TC sprang from, and was purposely patterned after, Brzezinski’s book in 1973.”

In other words, Brzezinski is a consummate insider and enthusiastic proponent of world government, that is to say he has worked long and diligently for the plan to transform the world into a corporate slave plantation and mega-sweatshop.

Thus it makes perfect sense Barack Obama, billed as one of “10 people who could change the world,” according to the New Statesman, has invited Zbigniew Brzezinski aboard, or rather was told by his globalist handlers to invite him. “For Brzezinski, 79, support for Obama means support for a radical change in direction of American foreign policy,” writes MSNBC. In other words, neolibs of Brzezinski’s ilk have lost patience with the chest-pounding neocons.

“These neocon prescriptions, of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel,” Brzezinski told Nathan Gardels, editor-in-chief of the journal of social and political thought published by Blackwell/Oxford and Global Services of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune. “They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East’s population against the United States. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neo-con policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well.” Naturally, neolibs of Brzezinski’s ilk prefer less obvious and immediately bloody measures. Moreover, the designs of Israel do not figure directly into the plan, a prospect horrifying to neocons and the AIPAC crowd.

“Neoconservatives and neoliberals are really quite similar, so it doesn’t matter who gets elected in 2008. The American public, weary of preemptive attacks, democracy-promotion, and nation-building, will still get war either way,” writes Philip Giraldi. As Ronald D. Asmus and Kenneth M. Pollack write for the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, “Neoliberals, among whom we number ourselves, believe in political preemption first and military preemption only as a last resort. We supported the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq because we concluded that force was the only way to lance these boils. But force will not work as a normal tool of policy or social engineering in the Middle East. Our goal must be to have the Arabs embrace democracy and modernization, not to force it down their throats.”

In other words, the neolibs believe in the tried and true method of making certain corrupt leaders are installed—consider, as primary examples, the Shah of Iran, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and the monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan—and accomplishing what the neocons are slogging through by way of proxy, albeit less dramatically and at a slower pace. Of course, the main difference is that the Israel-centric neocons, like their Jabotinskyite collaborators, hate Arabs and Muslims, whereas the neolibs are indifferent and far more interested in doing the bidding of the bankers, the IMF and World Bank, transnational corporations, that is to say advancing the process of “free trade” (as in unhindered looting and plunder) as well as ushering in world government, a process long envisioned by Brzezinski’s mentor, David Rockefeller.

Thus we should expect Foreign Policy Passport, a blog sponsored by Foreign Policy, the monthly magazine published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to declare Obama “the next JFK,” echoing Ted Sorenson of the New Republic. As should be expected, the elite at Carnegie have their reservations. “But the real question is, which John F. Kennedy? The young dynamo remembered favorably by Sorenson and revisionist historians? Or the inexperienced son of privilege who botched an invasion of Cuba and brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation? The jury is still out.” Actually, the CIA botched the Cuba invasion and more or less kept Kennedy in the dark, as Peter Kornbluh notes in Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (New Press, 1998), even though Kennedy had an unhealthy obsession with Cuba and the prospect of assassinating Fidel Castro.

Obama’s adding Brzezinski to his campaign reveals a widening riff between the neocons and neolibs as the U.S. moves toward the 2008 selection process. As Brzezinski has warned, tellingly tipping his hat, the neocons are not above staging yet another terror attack in order to get their way and bomb Iran, a prominent target on their list of countries to be flattened and reduced to “failed states” by way of depleted uranium.

As if to signal how dire things are for the neocons, Harvard Law professor—and advocate of torture and humiliation of Arabs and Muslims—Alan Dershowitz has thrown in his two cents in regard to Brzezinski. “It is a tremendous mistake for Barack Obama to select as a foreign policy adviser the one person in public life who has chosen to support a bigoted book,” Dershowitz recently declared, mentioning the Walt and Mearsheimer volume on the Israel lobby, that is to say the prime movers, along with the Jabotinskyite fanatics in Israel, of the neocon version of things. In order to balance the deck, Obama—again, his handlers—have inserted former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross to the veteran congressional staffer Dan Shapiro, both staunch Israel supporters.

No doubt, come November of next year, a few sparks will fly, although nothing of substance will change. Kurt Nimmo

Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate

Sunday, June 27, 2004

Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.

The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.

Ryan’s campaign began to crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans.

nh-obama.jpg (12114 bytes)
Barrack Obama

"It’s clear to me that a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I remain in the race," Ryan, 44, said in a statement. "What would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign – the kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of politics I refuse to play."

Although Ryan disputed the allegations, saying he and his wife went to one ‘avant-garde’ club in Paris and left because they felt uncomfortable, lashed out at the media and said it was "truly outrageous" that the Chicago Tribune got a judge to unseal the records.

The Republican choice will become an instant underdog in the campaign for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, since Obama held a wide lead even before the scandal broke.

"I feel for him actually," Obama told a Chicago TV station. "What he’s gone through over the last three days I think is something you wouldn’t wish on anybody."

The Republican state committee must now choose a replacement for Ryan, who had won in the primaries against seven contenders. Its task is complicated by the fact that Obama holds a comfortable lead in the polls and is widely regarded as a rising Democratic star.

The chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party, Judy Topinka, said at a news conference, after Ryan withdrew, that Republicans would probably take several weeks to settle on a new candidate.

"Obviously, this is a bad week for our party and our state," she said.

As recently as Thursday, spokesmen for the Ryan campaign still insisted that Ryan would remain in the race. Ryan had defended himself saying, "There’s no breaking of any laws. There’s no breaking of any marriage laws. There’s no breaking of the Ten Commandments anywhere."

http://web.archive.org/web/20040627142700/eastandard.net/headlines/news26060403.htm