Obama campaigned for Kenyan Dictator in 2006

Considering the election on the horizon it is imperative that this issue gets mention once again. While still a Senator back in 2006, Obama took a week long trip to campaign for his radical cousin Raila Odinga in Kenya.

Oh how people forget...

About 50 parishioners were locked into the Assemblies of God church before it was set ablaze. They were mostly women and children. Those who tried to flee were hacked to death by machete-wielding members of a mob numbering 2,000.

The 2008 New Year Day atrocity in the Kenyan village Eldoret, about 185 miles northwest of Nairobi, had all the markings of the Rwanda genocide of a decade earlier.

By mid-February 2008, more than 1,500 Kenyans were killed. Many were slain by machete-armed attackers. More than 500,000 were displaced by the religious strife. Villages lay in ruin. Many of the atrocities were perpetrated by Muslims against Christians.

The violence was led by supporters of Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who lost the Dec. 27, 2007, presidential election by more than 230,000 votes.

The same man Obama campaigned for. The same supporters who were cheering "Obama" at every turn and public appearance.

Why would then Senator Obama campaign for this man?

Mr. Odinga had the backing of Kenya’s Muslim community heading into the election. For months he denied any ties to Muslim leaders, but fell silent when Sheik Abdullahi Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum, appeared on Kenya television displaying a memorandum of understanding signed on Aug. 29, 2007, by Mr. Odinga and the Muslim leader. Mr. Odinga then denied his denials.

Based on the travel schedules of Odinga and Obama one could certainly conclude that this campaign trip was well organized.

The following statement holds just as much water now as it did when this article was first written.

Mr. Obama’s judgment is seriously called into question when he backs an official with troubling ties to Muslim extremists and whose supporters practice ethnic cleansing and genocide. It was Islamic extremists in Kenya who bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 and injuring thousands. None of this has dissuaded Mr. Obama from maintaining disturbing loyalties.

Please don't forget this chapter in Obama's History. A chapter he would just as soon hope you would forget
www.washingtontimes.com...

Funny...he doesn't look like the people in that video...

Maybe his mother or father was in danger for his/her life, and that's why Obama's name has been changed so many times, so her enemies or his father's enemies couldn't use him as collateral or leverage?

Maybe his mother or father was hiding from these enemies in Kenya when he was born, and decided s/he wanted a decent life for him so s/he moved back to the states...

Who the **** knows anymore...I sure as heck don't.

Hey, Stupid Question Alert, but this hit me like a brick within the first couple lines of your OP. There are a myriad of laws about what a U.S. Citizen can and cannot do overseas for political involvement for the internal affairs of other nations. Even being a mercenary has a law against it these days. At the same time, the U.S. has MAJOR laws about other national citizens playing in OUR internal politics.

So... Here is my stupid question. Isn't there something about a sitting U.S. Senator actively taking part in the campaigning of a foreign national in a foreign election process? If there isn't, there ought to be. It isn't just about Obama..although the fact HE is the one who did it makes it more interesting..but this just seems wrong somehow, no matter WHO did it.

How, by the way, was his trip to Kenya paid, as a sitting Senator? He was't Barry-Warbucks for money until his book sales exploded before his election to President. So..... He didn't go on the Senate travel allowance...to go help a family member campaign in another nation..did he? Naww.... He's a principled guy. He'd never commit so clear an ethical violation as a Senator. Would he? (Ethics on travel...the other part is the open question?)

Outkast... If I fell for a hoax.. My bad. It's annoying when a Pres has hidden so much of their own past that we can't even be sure what is true and isn't...or what is even believable and what isn't, eh? ..but some still say all that means nothing.

Why must known hoaxes be brought up again???

www.snopes.com...

www.politifact.com...

www.politifact.com...

Jibeho are you working overtime to prove your ignorance or dishonesty by rehashing proven hoaxes?

Origins: This widely-circulated message from Celeste Davis (who operates a ministry with her husband Loren Davis, whose previous works include an article explaining why the five-pointed stars used on the U.S. flag are Satanic) references Kenyan politician Raila Amolo Odinga, who represented the Orange Democratic Movement Party of Kenya against incumbent Mwai Kibaki in a presidential election held on 27 December 2007. Kibaki was initially proclaimed the winner of a close election, the results of which were challenged by Odinga as having been manipulated. (International observers generally agreed that the election count was flawed.) Violent protests over the disputed election results eventually left 1,500 people dead and displaced an estimated 600,000 more before Kibaki and Odinga agreed to form a coalition government in a power-sharing deal negotiated by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Odinga was sworn in as the prime minister of a national unity government (with Kibaki as its president) on 17 April 2008.

The real subject of this message is Barack Obama, however, and virtually everything included therein about him is either unsubstantiated or demonstrably false.

(see the article for all the points disproving this fabrication here)

It must be getting close to election time when even proven and debunked hoaxes get rehashed, this one along with the Kenyan BC one, now revived after a 3-year hiatus. Maybe the disinfo agents are hoping newer members will not realize these were already-disproved hoaxes until they garner the stars and flags and 50 pages of Obama-bashing they set out to collect.

Sad state of affairs in American politics.

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher
Why must known hoaxes be brought up again???

www.snopes.com...

www.politifact.com...

www.politifact.com...

edit on 29-2-2012 by OutKast Searcher because: (no reason given)

reply to post by getreadyalready


And this is what hoaxers do...they find one tiny piece of fact...and exploit it.

It goes like this...the OP posts a ridiculous story claiming Obama and Odinga are really close friends...in that story they weave the brief appearance from 2006.

So when the story is shown to be completely false...there are still people who will say, "but that one piece of information was true...so it must ALL be true.".


99% of the OP is proven hoax...but just because the included one fact it isn't going to be considered all hoax???

reply to post by OutKast Searcher

Originally posted by getreadyalready
The Washington Times article is certainly not a HOAX.

In regards to the Washington Times article:

In an October 17, 2008, letter to the editor, J. Scott Gration, a retired Air Force major general who accompanied Obama on his trip, responded:

Mark Hyman's "Obama's Kenya ghosts," (Commentary, Sunday), was a disgraceful smear on Sen. Barack Obama. Because I accompanied Mr. Obama on his trip to Kenya, I can say unequivocally that Mr. Hyman's piece was filled with lies and innuendo.

Mr. Obama's 2006 trip to Kenya was authorized by the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who congratulated Mr. Obama on a successful trip when he returned.

Mr. Obama did not "campaign" on behalf of Raila Odinga, has never endorsed him, and was not "nearly inseparable" from Mr. Odinga during his time in Kenya. Mr. Obama met with a wide range of Kenyan and American officials, including a Nobel Prize winner, human-rights defenders, and President Mwai Kibaki. He did not have a single scheduled meeting with Mr. Odinga.

• Mr. Obama was accompanied throughout his trip by myself and two other active-duty U.S. military officers; and the U.S. ambassador attended meetings and events throughout the trip. The Obama staffer - Mark Lippert - that Mr. Hynes names is a naval reservist and Iraq War veteran whose deployment began several months before the Kenyan elections and continued well past it.

• The Obama speech that Mr. Hyman references was a widely praised effort that condemned corruption and tribalism while urging the promotion of private enterprise and accountable, transparent government.

• Mr. Obama and Mr. Odinga are not cousins, and efforts to assert otherwise have been described as “stretched to the point of ridiculousness” by an independent fact checker.

Mr. Hyman references telephone contacts that Mr. Obama had with Mr. Odinga in January. He fails to mention that those contacts were encouraged by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and were accompanied by public statements that Mr. Obama made on Voice of America, Kenyan radio, and in a Kenyan newspaper, calling for calm and a peaceful resolution of Kenya’s political crisis. Repeatedly, Mr. Obama asserted, “the opposition (led by Mr. Odinga) must turn away from the path of mass protest and violence in seeking participation in government.”

www.washingtontimes.com...

reply to post by Muttley2012


That is pretty convincing, but it is just a letter to the editor. Did the Times ever re-address the issue?

Originally posted by getreadyalready
reply to post by Muttley2012

 

That is pretty convincing, but it is just a letter to the editor. Did the Times ever re-address the issue?

I don't know if they ever re-addressed it or not; however, I'll take a firsthand account by a retired Major General over the secondhand word of a columnist with an agenda. Let me ask you, why should we take the word of the author of the original Washington Times article? I know we both read the same article; an article with no sources and full of suppositions.

reply to post by getreadyalready

but in the typed text I don't see anything that was debunked? Please point it out for us.

From the OP:

While still a Senator back in 2006, Obama took a week long trip to campaign for his radical cousin Raila Odinga in Kenya.

Let's break down the truth and the hoax in this one sentence...the rest of the OP is based off of this entire sentence...so debunking this debunks the entire OP.

There are two parts of the claim.

1) Obama took a week long trip to campaign for Raila Odinga.

2) Obama and Odinga are cousins.

For the claim that Obama took a week long trip TO CAMPAIGN for Raila Odinga.

www.politifact.com...

Corsi's description of Obama's role in Kenyan politics is filled with errors and innuendo. Corsi focuses on a 2006 trip Obama made to Africa as a U.S. senator. The visit included stops in South Africa, Kenya and Chad.

Obama's trip came about a year before elections were scheduled in Kenya. On one side was incumbent President Mwai Kibaki; one of his main challengers was Raila Odinga.
...
What we can confirm is that Obama has remained neutral in Kenyan politics, and did not support Odinga during his trip. Odinga attended some of Obama's events while Obama was in Kenya, and clearly wanted to associate himself with Obama, but there is no evidence to indicate that Obama "openly supported" Odinga. (We previously reported on a letter from missionaries that alleged Obama contributed to Odinga's campaign; we rated it Pants on Fire! wrong.)
...
For this statement, we decided to scour the public record for evidence that Obama supported Odinga. We looked to contemporary accounts of the 2006 trip and found a transcript from an interview Obama gave to a Kenyan newspaper that directly contradicts Corsi's allegation.

Question: "As you prepared to travel to Kenya you were obviously conscious of two things. One was about being drawn into local politics. The other was the high expectations of what you could do for Kenya now that you are a senator. How did you handle both?"

Obama: "One of the things we try to do is meet with all parties. I met President Kibaki, I met Uhuru Kenyatta, I was with Raila Odinga. We met the government, met the opposition and met other groups such as human rights activists. What I try to do is give a consistent message on what I think U.S.-Kenya relations should be, but not to suggest somehow that I think one party is better than the other. That's for the Kenyan people to decide."

Do you admit that this debunks the part of the OP that Obama went to Kenya to campaign for Odinga? Just because Odinga attended events that Obama attended doesn't mean Obama supported Odinga.

If you don't think it is false and a hoax...please provide evidence that Obama went to Kenya and campaigned for Odinga.



Now for the claim that Obama and Odinga are cousins...this one seems pretty easy and clear cut.

www.politifact.com...

"Who just happened to be his cousin, Raila Odinga, who is a socialist trained in East Germany."

This part of the claim stems from an interview Odinga did with BBC News in January 2008. ( Listen to it here. ) In a discussion about the political situation in Kenya amid fallout from a disputed election — where Odinga's party rejected official results and vowed to install Odinga as the "people's president" — the following exchange occurs:

Odinga: "Barack Obama's father is my maternal uncle."

BBC: "You're related to him?"

Odinga: "Yes, I am."

No, you're not, says the Obama campaign.

We spoke to three Kenya experts who dismiss this part of the claim as well, suggesting Odinga made the connection to give himself more legitimacy during the political crisis.

"It's stretched to the point of ridiculousness," said Joel D. Barkan, political science professor emeritus at the University of Iowa and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "To my knowledge, they are not first cousins in the normal sense. To my knowledge, there's absolutely no relationship at all."

Alex Awiti, a Kenyan postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, says you have to consider the context of when Odinga was speaking, that being in the middle of a political crisis.

"Raila Odinga was groping all over the place, trying to find some political legitimacy to get on a high pedestal to claim leadership and using Obama was basically going to add some political points," said Awiti, who lived in Kenya until three years ago. "This is very opportunistic and it should be totally disregarded."

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


reply to post by Muttley2012


Agree with both of you on the very valid points. Still, BBC and Washington Times vs. Politifact and a Letter to the Editor? Unless they retracted their story or wrote a follow-up for clarification, I will assume their credibility trumps the credibility of the more obscure sources.

I'm not saying the article is necessarily true, but the supposed debunk isn't any more convincing than the original author.

I'm also not out to get Obama like so many people are. I voted for the guy the first time around, and my write in vote for Ron Paul this time around will only benefit Obama. Obama is no better or worse than any of the other candidates (except for RP), so I see no huge emergency to run him out of office.

All of the rumors surrounding Obama make for a strong circumstantial case. I don't know if he is Muslim, and I don't care. I don't know if he had any illicit homosexual encounters, and I don't care. I don't know if he was born in Hawaii or Kenya, and I only slightly care. I don't know if his grades were any good in college, and I only care that he didn't release them like even our C-student Bush did. The problem for me is that he seems to have so much to hide. There is a huge case of circumstantial evidence that looms over him like a cloud! From the racist church, to the Muslim ties, to the Birth Certificate, to his Law License, to his education, to the radical claims of his sexuality. George W. had a lot of skeletons in his closet, but he attacked and owned them. This guy skates around everything and it makes me suspicious.

Three articles written on this topic have since been scrubbed from the archives. One in Time magazine, another by the AP and a third in the Chicago Sun Times. Wish I had a Lexis/Nexis account.

I cannot get to these original articles

Chicago Sun Times, 8/29/2006:

“Because of his African heritage, Obama was treated as a virtual “Head of State” in Kenya While campaigning with Odinga, Obama was openly critical of governmental corruption under President Mibaki –usually a fair, if undiplomatic, criticism from an objective observer.”

Excerpt from Article “Walking The World Stage” Newsweek 9/11/06:

“Obama’s partisan support for Odinga was considered so transparent, that the Kenyan Government spokesman, Alfred Matua, complained of political posturing to aid Odinga’s election chances: “It is very clear that the senator has been used as a puppet to perpetuate opposition politics,”

Continue reading on Examiner.com Obama's Radical Ties: Raila Odinga - Fort Worth Libertarian | Examiner.com www.examiner.com...

reply to post by getreadyalready


Well I can only provide the facts...I can't force you to accept them.


I just think it is a shame that a proven hoax can be perpetrated here on ATS even when proof of the hoax is offered up.


There were two claims made in the OP.

1) Obama made a trip specifically to campaign for Odinga.
2) Obama and Odinga are cousins.

Both of these have been proven to be false...and yet this thread remains.

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher

Both of these have been proven to be false...and yet this thread remains.

Apparently, this will not be moved to the HOAX trash bin unless Obama himself sets the record straight on this issue...along with clarification on his religion, sexuality, grades, past associates/acquaintances, birth certificate, law license, education, etc... AND ceases to "skate around" rumors and circumstantial evidence. Even then, Obama would be labeled a liar and the thread would still remain.

Rest assured, if the OP was regarding Ron Paul...where there was one truth and numerous lies....this thread would have been trashed before the first response.

reply to post by Muttley2012


This was moved to the Hoax forum several posts ago.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
reply to post by Muttley2012

 

This was moved to the Hoax forum several posts ago.

My mistake, I suppose I should have hit the refresh button and scrolled to the top of the page to check before I posted my reply. Thank you for being objective and taking action based upon the evidence presented.

reply to post by Muttley2012


Especially since I never really liked Obama... just prefer accuracy.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

Can you refute Hyman's article?
Has that article been retracted by The Washington Times?
Has Obama personally commented or refuted his connections to Raila?

All reasonable questions posed on site meant to provide an open forum to discuss. Yet so quick to label this a hoax. Keep your eyes on Africa. We are quickly getting closer to Obama's back yard.