Is Obama Too Smart to Be President?

Phil, i appreciate reading your point of view with regards to the democratic candidates, i have in the past always voted republican (dont hold it against me), and am now hoping against all hope for ron paul to keep me in the conservative fold, but i am willing to cross the line and vote for anyone who stands up to defend the constitutional division of powers with more vigor and to realize a change in our foreign policy.

I am willing to go along with any social issue considerations by any candidate from either party as long as he or she proves to have the sentiments i find important.
The security/police state that is being erected to protect americas citizens is what concerns me most, habeas corpus and the military commissions act along with the changes to fisa and the willingness of our congress to surrender our rights is an indicator to me that major changes are taking place and the pace of those changes is accelerating, which point to something more sinister.

i appreciate your insight and read your reporting, and wish you success at reaching many many new readers. By the way i was at the camera "defamers" conference and also very much appreciated your take on the speakers message.

i didnt ask any questions in the public setting but did take the opportunity to speak with dr levin about his stockholm syndrome diagnosis and with alex safian about why he thought there were so many jewish "defamers" cropping up around the world at this moment in time and what undercurrents might be in the social soil to cause them to sprout spontaneously in so many diverse places and with the same concerns.

camera/aipac has been able to manage dissent for many years and still feels that this recent upcropping of dissenters can be extinguished as they have been in the past.

Is Obama really smarter than Bill Clinton? I view them as comparable in intelligence. Obama isn't really on a jurist career track. Has any former senator ever been appointed to the Supreme Court bench?

Mike Gravel, first rate intellect, fourth rate temperment. No wonder he's got me.

Sorry, anyone maintaining a constantly polite façade in these times earns my automatic disqualification. The media and the authorities of this country have earned every patriot's contempt.

With his recent stance on Iran, ie aggressive personal diplomacy rich with carrots, Obama is our only hope (other than of course the hopeless ones: Paul, Kucinich, and Gravel) for a major foreign policy shift. I expect the Israel Lobby, hellbent on war with Iran, will punish him for this. The NY money people may not be able to play a role just at this moment as he may be temporarily flush with cash, but certainly the media will. This will be reminiscent of 4 years ago when Howard Dean spoke of an even-handed policy in Palestine and was immediately featured in negative cover articles in Time and Newsweek and lost Iowa. (The media followed up by highlighting the so-called scream.)

(CBS) 60 Minutes has identified the man whose fabricated story of Iraqi biological weapons drove the U.S. argument for invading Iraq. It has also obtained video of "Curve Ball," as he was known in intelligence circles, and discovered he was not only a liar, but also a thief and a poor student instead of the chemical engineering whiz he claimed to be.

60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon's two-year investigation will be broadcast this Sunday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Curve Ball is an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan, who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999. To bolster his asylum case and increase his importance, he told officials he was a star chemical engineer who had been in charge of a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was making mobile biological weapons.

60 Minutes has learned that Alwan’s university records indicate he did study chemical engineering but earned nearly all low marks, mostly 50s. Simon’s investigation also uncovered an arrest warrant for theft from the Babel television production company in Baghdad where he once worked.

Also appearing in Sunday's segment is video that 60 Minutes obtained of Alwan at a Baghdad wedding in 1993.

He eventually wound up in the care of German intelligence officials to whom he continued to spin his tale of biological weapons. His plan succeeded partially because he had worked briefly at the plant outside Baghdad and his descriptions of it were mostly accurate. He embellished his account by saying 12 workers had been killed by biological agents in an accident at the plant.

More than a hundred summaries of his debriefings were sent to the CIA, which then became a pillar – along with the now-disproved Iraqi quest for uranium for nuclear weapons – for the U.S. decision to bomb and then invade Iraq. The CIA-director George Tenet gave Alwan’s information to Secretary of State Colin Powell to use at the U.N. in his speech justifying military action against Iraq.

Tenet gave the information to Powell despite a letter – a copy of which 60 Minutes obtained – addressed to him by the head of German intelligence stating that Alwan appeared to be believable, but there was no evidence to verify his story.

Through a spokesman, Tenet denies ever seeing the letter. "[Tenet] needs to talk to his special assistants if he didn’t see it," says Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official. "I am sure they showed it to him and I am sure … it wasn’t what they wanted to see," he tells Simon.

Other CIA officials doubted Curve Ball’s authenticity, including former Central Group Chief Margaret Henoch, who speaks publicly for the first time, telling Simon she openly refuted Alwan’s story. "And it was like 'Whack a Mole.' He just popped right back up. It was unbelievable."

Alwan was caught when CIA interrogators were finally allowed to question him and confronted him with evidence that his story could not be as he described it. Weapons inspectors had examined the plant at Djerf al Nadaf before the fall of Baghdad and found no evidence of biological agents.

In the end, however, Alwan got what he wanted. He is believed to be in Germany, free and probably living under an assumed name.

Why did he do it?

"It was a guy trying to get his green card essentially, in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth," says Drumheller. "It just shows … the law of unintended consequences," he tells Simon

"Another Jew for Obama" should read Mearsheimer and Walt's book "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" wherein it is clearly stated over and over that the term "Israel Lobby" is not synonymous with Jewish people. Most Jews do not support the radical Likud agenda of the Israel Lobby(which by the way contains many non-Jews). Incidentally, as if to back up what I predicted, last night on PBS "Washington Week," Time Magazine's Michael Duffy dumped all over Obama using adjectives such as "odd," "not comfortable," and concluding that Obama "came up the shortest" in the debate. Later on Duffy said we have 6 months (or possibly 18 months) to "make a decision" on Iran. It would appear that as usual we're being railroaded into another invasion.

An article by Andrew Sullivan about Obama.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200712/obama