Politics
Obama Flamed Again
This time, though, he wuz robbed
By Adrianne Jeffries Fri 3 Aug 2007 02:15 PMBarack Obama is being pummeled again for his public statements about foreign policy. The candidate told the Associated Press yesterday that he would not use nuclear weapons against Al Qaeda “under any circumstances,” drawing criticism from Hillary Clinton, among others. “Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons,” Clinton said. “Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrents to keep the peace, and I don’t believe any president should make blanket statements with the regard to use or nonuse.”
But some of the outrage, it seems, was the result of sloppy reporting or editing. In initial reports, the AP reprinted Obama’s quote without explaining that he was responding to a question about Al Qaeda, so that it appeared he was dismissing any possibility of using nuclear weapons in any situation. Matt Drudge’s link to the AP piece was headlined, “Obama: No Nukes.” The AP was called on it by a number of bloggers:
“This week, Obama has been slammed, repeatedly, as a result of sloppy reporting,” writes Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report.
MyDD parses Obama’s stance on nukes, and asks: “Maybe we could learn a lesson about pouncing too quickly?”
Still, writes Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic Online, Obama “should have been more careful with his words.”
Also in today’s news, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf condemned Obama for saying he would pursue terrorists in Pakistan if Musharraf refused to act. It seems Obama is being damned for aggressiveness as well as restraint.
Read of the Day: George Lakoff writes on Huffington Post about Obama, Edwards, Clinton, the Bush administration and the use of silence and euphemism in propaganda. Sometimes avoiding blanket statements is a way of avoiding public debate by refusing to talk about an issue like a nuclear strike, he says.
CJR
