Berkowitz joins in with Lynn Sweet complaining about the Obama team not being forthright enough about outstate fundraising–Jeff adds in complaints about policy information–though I’ve heard and in a couple small cases experienced very different response time everyone can see what he has to say. The outstate fundraising issue is one of those issues that the public doesn’t care about, though I think all campaigns should be better about it. Ultimately, campaigns want to stay in control of their message and questions regarding outstate events takes away from that.
However, let me take issue with Jeff over this quote:
Robert Bluey writes, “Obama, however, is different from most Democrats because of his willingness to embrace the controversial Soros. Shortly after Soros equated the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Obama joined him for a New York fund-raiser [on] June 7, 2004.” See CNSnews.com, June 27, 2004
Now did Soros equate Abu Ghraib and September 11th? Yes, but not in anyway like is implied above. The above implication assumes Soros indicates the two incidents were of the same moral standing–which is not what Soros said.
Here is what Soros did say:
So for about 18 months the critical process, which is so essential to a democracy, was stifled. And it is only when things started going wrong in Iraq that it was re-opened. I think that the picture of torture in Abu Ghraib, in Saddam’s prison, was the moment of truth for us, because this is not what this nation stands for.
I think that those pictures hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself, not quite with the same force because in the terrorist attack we were the victims. In the pictures we were the perpetrators, others were the victims. But, there is, I’m afraid, a direct connection between those two events, because the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators.
This is a very tough thing to say, but the fact is that the war on terror as conducted by this administration has claimed more innocent victims than the original attack itself.
What is being compared is how the US’s higher standards of morality are challenging US citizens when they see such acts being undertaken by the US Soldiers. It is because the US has higher standards of morality than Al Qaeda that it had a similar effect.
The next line is true, though certainly whether it is better in the long run is a question many would debate.
More importantly though, the only “radical” view that Soros seems to have concerns drug legalization, but people continue to spread the story that he is some sort of fringe political character.
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