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Obama Claim: "Ambassador Keyes has suggested I am naïve." Obama: Weak on the War on Terror If Barack Obama had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, and would still pose a threat to the United States. Obama opposed American liberation of Iraq, and believes U.S. policy in the Middle East should be held hostage to the whims of European nations who do business with Saddam Hussein and the Arab states who fund terrorist attacks against America and her allies. President Bush has made clear that, based on the intelligence we had at the time, he believed Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed a grave and imminent threat to the security of the United States. The possibility that Saddam might have shared weapons of mass destruction with terrorists bent on our destruction, he reasoned, was too great a threat to overlook - or to leave to others to safeguard. John Kerry and John Edwards saw the same intelligence, and reached the same conclusion - and voted to give President Bush the authority to go to war to protect America. Barack Obama said he believed President Bush's reasons for going to war were "political," and instead lined himself up with Howard Dean - a "political" act if ever there was one. Barack Obama tries to present himself as an expert on foreign policy and defending America. But the one chance he had to cast a vote to protect the people of Illinois, Barack Obama failed to show up. Before Barack Obama says anything else, he should explain why he didn't show up to vote on HB2745. HB2745 (2003): Voted Not Present, Appropriations to Illinois Emergency Mgmt Agency, 93rd Gen. Assembly, 11/21/03 Appropriated $55 million for Bio-terrorism Preparedness Activities and $2.1 million for costs associated with the Illinois Terrorism Task Force-approved procurements for homeland security. "What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove [President Bush's chief political strategist] to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to: a dumb war; a rash war; a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics." Barack Obama speech to an anti-war rally, October, 2002, cited by NBC News "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, July 24, 2004. "I do not pretend to have all the answers to this vexing problem … What I can say is this: not only must we be consistent, but we will not succeed unless we have the cooperation of the European Union and the Arab states in pressing for reforms within the Palestinian community." Barack Obama speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, July 12, 2004. |
