THE SWIFT BOATING OF OBAMA

Book links Obama to the January 2008 church killings in Eldoret, Kenya.

There is cause to worry if you are an Obama supporter. The number one book on the New York Times bestseller list, Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, is a vicious attack that paints Obama as a man too dangerous even for the dungeons of Guantanamo Bay. But that is not all that is worrying me - heck, Fox News and talk radio while their days away mongering fear on "Hussein Obama". My major source of concern is the fact that the author, Dr. Jerome R. Corsi, is the person widely believed to have won the 2004 elections for George Bush when the infamous "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads, prompted by his book Unfit for Command, rubbished beyond repair John Kerry's patriotism and military service.

Like the book on Kerry, Obama Nation, is packed with blatant lies; albeit poorly masked behind 700 footnotes which the author hopes readers would not bother to verify. Corsi attempts to paint Obama as a dangerous leftist ideologue unfit for the presidency due to his "radical connections". My Kenyan background and thus familiarity with Kenyan politics, enables me to point out some obvious lies in the book that appertain one of the "radical connections", a Kenyan politician known as Raila Odinga. With verifiable facts, I am going to debunk Corsi's claim that Obama supports Raila Odinga, a "communist Kenyan politician responsible for the murder of hundreds of Kenyans and a supporter of Islamic terrorists".

The lie about Raila Odinga's association with Obama is two fold: that Raila is a communist, responsible for the deaths of Kenyans and a supporter of radical Islam and secondly that Raila Odinga is such a close Obama associate as to warrant concern were the things Corsi alleges about him true. Thus Corsi writes:

I have pursued Obama’s extensive and continuing connections with Kenya, the homeland of his father, where Obama has continued to involve himself personally in advancing the goals of Raila Odinga, the radical socialist presidential contender who comes from Obama’s home tribe

I am not a fan of Raila Odinga, neither do I know what ideology he professes. What I know is that he is currently the Prime Minister of Kenya, a solidly capitalistic state. I also know that he partly owes his ascension to that position to none other than the United States of America. Under the direct intervention of George W. Bush, the Kenyan constitution was altered this year to specifically create the post of Prime Minister for Mr. Odinga who had rejected the outcome of the elections.

Kenyans voted on December 2007 in the most contested election in the country's history. Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent, won by a narrow margin contrary to what opinion polls were showing in the run up to the election. The country erupted in violence. There were two forms of violence: on one hand there was a group from Raila's Luo tribe who felt that they had been denied their democratic right through a fraudulent election. This group mainly demonstrated by marching on the streets. Despite there being numerous running battles with the police and property damage in the process, there was hardly any violence against civilians.

Then there was another group; mainly men from the Kalenjin tribe who supported Odinga for presidency and resented the fact that he had lost but their anger seemed not to be a protest against the perceived injustice of rigged elections but rather a barbaric attack on members of the Kikuyu community who lived among them - with or without Odinga's presidency. It therefore strikes me as recklessly disingenuous and utterly insensitive to the pain Kenyans suffered, when Corsi attempts to link Obama to the infamous massacre in Eldoret where 40 women and children were burnt to death as they sought refuge during the election violence. In an interview on Hannity and Colmes, he says:

These Christians and elders in a little village, 50 Christians came into this church and refuge. The Lou (sic) mob, and that's — Odinga is a Lou (sic) tribesman, Obama is a Lou tribesman in Kenya. They burned the church down and killed the people.

full transcript here

As I mentioned earlier, the church was burned by Kalenjins...not Luos. I should know, I am a Kenyan. The Kalenjins were trying to evict Kikuyus from Rift Valley province as a result of a long standing land feud. Eldoret is in the heart of Rift Valley. Eldoret is Rift Valley's chief town. But regardless of who killed who in Kenya, I would sure hope that Americans (and anyone else who is not Corsi) knows that Obama is not a Luo but an American born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas.

If we believe that Raila Odinga is all these bad things, and for that Obama should be considered "unfit" for presidency because of his association with Odinga, should we not also question the legitimacy of President Bush who has a public and substantive relationship with Mr. Odinga? Earlier this year when Mwai Kibaki appeared to be adamant about refusing to share power with Mr. Odinga, president Bush took it upon himself to send Condoleezza Rice on an errand whose purpose was to make "leaders hear from her first hand that the United States desires to see that there be no violence and that there be a power sharing agreement that will help this nation resolve its difficulties" Telegraph

So if...
-Bush supports Odinga.
-Odinga is a communist, terrorist supporter
-Bush endorsed McCain
-Shouldn't it then follow, Dr. Corsi,
that..

McCain too is "unfit" for presidency due to his radical association? So when is that McCain book coming out?

As far as Raila's terrorist sympathies and a Memorandum of Understanding that he signed with radical Kenyan Muslims as the book purports, promising to among others, introduce sharia laws to the constitution, that particular document was proved to be a fake last year. Like Corsi's book, it was a dirty campaign tactic targeting Mr. Odinga. The memo signed between Odinga and the Muslim community in Kenya contained campaign promises that were benign and very public. You can read the actual memo here.

Obama has never publicly expressed support for Mr. Odinga. In fact during his last visit in America in the month of June, Odinga tried unsuccessfully to secure a meeting with the senator while he received a warm welcome at the State Department by Miss Rice. Despite this being a public event that was widely reported in the news, somehow Corsi missed it. Instead, he chose to preoccupy his readers with lies about Obama's "daily phone contacts with Odinga."

What about a McCain supporter who only a few months ago offered to help Raila Odinga's campaign for free!!? Dick Morris, who also has an Obama bashing book called fleeced, traveled to Kenya towards the end of 2007 and volunteered his services as a campaign strategist - pro bono! Here is the video...


Dick Morris and Raila.