Democrat Attack Machine

Why is Jerome Corsi's new book on Barack, The Obama Nation, so freely called 'slime,' without evidence of it's sliminess being offered? For example, on the Washington Post blog The Swamp, Frank James quotes Paul Waldman of Media Matters on Larry King as saying, "You can put slime in the covers of a book and it's still slime."


But there's no evidence presented that the book is unfairly attacking Barack. Instead, evidence is presented that Corsi is trying to dig through the record to answer questions.

Anyone who's been following the controversy over the book or who watches this Larry King segment or, better yet, who has seen the infamous New Yorker cover featuring the Obama caricatures, already knows pretty much all they need to know about the contents of this book. Through innuendo, it forwards the rumors that Sen. Barack Obama is a crypto-Muslim and that his wife Michelle is the spiritual twin of Angela Davis.

Why is this not a reasonable exploration? There is evidence, presented by Michelle herself, that her views are quite radical and that she's very judgmental toward America. Should those views, and a pretty clear attempt to coverup that record, go uncovered? And if Barack has a Muslim history, what's wrong with that and why shouldn't it be part of the record?

If you listen to the King interview, what you see is an attempt to shoot the messenger, not attack the arguments made.

KING: Jerome, if a man says he is a Christian, why doubt that?

CORSI: Well, I don't. I say in the book I can't read Barack Obama's soul. I can't look into his mind. If he says he's a Christian, he's a Christian. What I say is...

KING: So (INAUDIBLE).

CORSI: Well, but what I document Barack Obama just there said he was not raised as a Muslim. I very clearly document in Indonesia, when he was six to 10 years old, living with his mother and his Islamic stepfather, he did attend a public school where he received Muslim education. And he...

KING: But...

CORSI: ...it was the type of Islamic education that was for a person registered as a Muslim in that school, which Barack Obama had also been when he attended Catholic school in (INAUDIBLE).

KING: But Jerome, you know that Jewish kids go to Catholic schools. It doesn't make them Catholic.

CORSI: Well, he was registered as a Muslim. The documentation -- I thoroughly researched it from the Indonesian newspapers and Indonesian television. He attended mosque with his stepfather. The friends who were in school with him attest that he was then considered a Muslim. And that's the testimony of the people in Indonesia who grew up in those six years (INAUDIBLE)...

Anyway, CNN actually sent a reporter last year to Obama's old Indonesian grade school. What did he find? That the school, though nominally Muslim (Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country, after all) is a public school and quite secular. Here's an excerpt of that report:

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

Now in the book, Corsi says CNN misses the point. He allows that Obama didn't attend a madrassa. But that doesn't mean he wasn't exposed to Islamic precepts and the Koran as a grade-schooler, writes Corsi.

In the book, Corsi leads us through a confusing (at least I was confused) exploration of exactly what neighborhood young Barry lived in when he attended this school or that. He claims Obama's autobiography, "Dreams of My Father" is unclear on the point. Then he gives two possible explanations, one benign, the other sinister.

Whether the realities of Barack's past are relevant or not is up to voters to decide - after the facts are on the table.

"The truth is that we do not know for sure how many moves there were or where Obama was living when he attended the government run public school. Unfortunately, what Obama writes about his time in Indonesia is not precise enough, with regard to locations and dates, to help us to sort it out. Obama was young when he was in Indonesia and maybe some of the details of the experience are obscure, even to him. Or, maybe he is trying to minimize intentionally the extent to which the experience placed him in an Islamic setting where he received public school education in Islam. Again, we simply don't know."

The attempt to know the truth about Barack is reasonable. The pursuit is fair, and it is one that we should expect authors and media writers to be engaged in. Why the attempt to Swift Boat authors?

And if you're Corsi, this kind of uncertainty, if it be that, is actually what you thrive on since it allows you to raise questions about Obama's truthfulness etc. Corsi admits to anyone who asks, as King did, if he is out to defeat Obama. Indeed he is, he said. He sees the senator from Illinois as "unfit for command" to use the title of Corsi's previous book on Sen. John Kerry. So he's not about to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. It's more like damning by doubt.

I've only browsed Corsi's book thus far, so I don't know how to react to it, but when those refuting the claims in the book are lying themselves, and when the media is so frenzied in its desire to blast the book, I get concerned.