"I Accuse..." Finally, a response: Bravo Washington Times!

Here's the original Radarsite story:

"Since they dared, I too will dare. The truth I will say, because I promised to say it; if justice, regularly seized, did not do it, full and whole."

J'Accuse...! Emile Zola

We asked: Will the most damaging Obama scandal of them all be buried alive?
And from the entire mainstream media we received our unequivocal answer: Yes.

Did Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama attempt to dally in U.S. foreign and military policy during his first trip to Iraq in July? According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in Amir Taheri’s op-ed in Monday’s New York Post, Obama used his trip to privately lobby Iraqi government officials to delay an agreement that would reduce the number of American soldiers in Iraq, while at the same time publicly calling for a unilateral withdrawal.

- Obama’s Questionable Diplomacy in Iraq
From Pajamas Media
September 16, 2008 - by Bob Owens

This could be, should be, the biggest story of the campaign.
This more than any other scandal, or rumor of scandal should be the end of Barack Hussein Obama. However -- and this is a huge 'However' -- will the media give it the attention it so obviously deserves? Or will they bury it under a mass of propaganda and lies? Or, worse still, will they just try to ignore it? This is going to be a test of wills. The will of the American people versus the will of the media elite and the Internationalist, anti-Americanist Obama crowd.
This should be, must be the most important story in this election. If we are to stand a chance of keeping our great country free and American, we simply cannot allow this monumental scandal to be swept under the rug.

I accuse...the major television networks of either gross dereliction of duty, or willful obfuscation in the suppression of this outrageous scandal.

I accuse...the major print media of either gross dereliction of duty, or willful obfuscation in the suppression of this outrageous scandal.

I accuse...the Obama Campaign of willful obfuscation in the suppression of this outrageous scandal.

I accuse...the Democratic Party of willful obfuscation in the suppression of this outrageous scandal.

I accuse...the United States Congress of either gross dereliction of duty, or willful obfuscation in the suppression of this outrageous scandal.

Is this how it will happen? Is this how we will lose our country? Is this all it takes? Can we as a people be this easily manipulated ? Are we actually powerless to fight back? Are we going to just sit back and allow others to dictate what news stories will be covered and what news stories will be suppressed? Are we going to allow this cynical and heartless attempt to manipulate our brave military for the personal political gain of one ruthless politician to pass into oblivion without even a Congressional Inquiry? Has it really come to this? Because, if it has, if we as a people, as a country, can do nothing but meekly submit to the omnipotent will of one potential tyrant, then our great democratic experiment is finished, and we will justly deserve our awful fate. - rg

For the previous Radarsite articles on this subject see here and here and here

Update: Amir Tehari's response at National Review

-----------------------------------------------------------------

An update from Radarsite (10 October 2008). Bravo The Washington Times! This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first major news organization to touch this explosive story. But hopefully it won't be the last. Hopefully we haven't lost our country quite yet. Hopefully there are still some news organizations out there for whom the truth still matters. In the previous article we stated that this buried story should have been the biggest scandal of the campaign. Well, there's still time left. Thank you to Yid With Lid for bringing this Washington Times Exclusive to our attention.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obama tried to sway Iraqis on Bush deal

Washington Times
Friday, October 10, 2008
Barbara Slavin
EXCLUSIVE:

At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn't be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval.

Mr. Obama's conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House candidate's contacts with foreign governments while the sitting president is conducting a war.

Some of the specifics of the conversations remain the subject of dispute. Iraqi leaders purported to The Times that Mr. Obama urged Baghdad to delay an agreement with Mr. Bush until next year when a new president will be in office - a charge the Democratic campaign denies.

Mr. Obama spoke June 16 to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari when he was in Washington, according to both the Iraqi Embassy in Washington and the Obama campaign. Both said the conversation was at Mr. Zebari's request and took place on the phone because Mr. Obama was traveling.

However, the two sides differ over what Mr. Obama said.

"In the conversation, the senator urged Iraq to delay the [memorandum of understanding] between Iraq and the United States until the new administration was in place," said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq's ambassador to the United States.

He said Mr. Zebari replied that any such agreement would not bind a new administration. "The new administration will have a free hand to opt out," he said the foreign minister told Mr. Obama.

Mr. Sumaidaie did not participate in the call, he said, but stood next to Mr. Zebari during the conversation and was briefed by him immediately afterward.

The call was not recorded by either side, and Mr. Zebari did not respond to repeated telephone and e-mail messages requesting direct comment.

Mr. Obama has called for a phased U.S. withdrawal of all but a residual force from Iraq over 16 months, a position the Iraqi government appears to have embraced.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have been struggling for months to finalize a deal that will allow U.S. troops to remain after Dec. 31, when a U.N. mandate sanctioning the military presence expires. Iraqi officials have said that the main impediment is agreement over a timeline for U.S. redeployment and immunity from Iraqi prosecution for U.S. troops and civilians.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Mr. Obama does not object to a short-term status of forces agreement, or SOFA.

Mr. Obama told Mr. Zebari in June that a SOFA "should be completed before January and it must include immunity for U.S. troops," Miss Morigi wrote in an e-mail.

However, the Democratic nominee said a broader strategic framework agreement governing a longer-term U.S. presence in Iraq "should be vetted by Congress," she wrote.

She said Mr. Obama said the same thing when he met in July with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Mr. Zebari in Baghdad.

A recent article in the New York Post quoted Mr. Zebari as saying that Mr. Obama asked Iraqi leaders in July to delay any agreement on a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq until the next U.S. president takes office.

Miss Morigi denied this. She said the request for Senate vetting was bipartisan and noted that the first Obama-Zebari conversation took place 12 days after four other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - including Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urging consultation over any agreements committing U.S. troops and civilian contractors to Iraq "for an extended period of time."

When Mr. Obama spoke to Mr. Zebari, he was speaking in his capacity as a senator and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Miss Morigi said. "It's obvious that others are trying to mischaracterize Obama's position, [but] on numerous occasions he has made it perfectly clear that the United States only has one president at a time and that the administration speaks with one voice."

Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who accompanied Mr. Obama in Iraq along with Mr. Hagel, said they made "no suggestion of any type of delay" in any agreements.

A congressional aide who was also present and spoke on the condition of anonymity said the senators asked for a congressional role similar to that required by the Iraqi Constitution for Iraq's parliament.

Still, the fact that the Illinois Democrat on June 3 clinched enough delegates to be assured the Democratic presidential nomination gives his comments special force - something that also applies to the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a key proponent of the surge of extra U.S. forces to Iraq last year.

As a U.S. senator, Mr. Obama "has a foot in both camps," said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. "It's within the jurisdiction of his committee and something he's entitled to speak about. It doesn't raise a red flag for me."

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on the matter.

Leslie Phillips, a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, also declined to comment even though an embassy note-taker was present during the senators' meeting in Iraq. "The embassy's role is purely to facilitate the meetings," she said.

Presidential nominees traditionally have not intervened personally in foreign-policy disputes, although campaign surrogates have done so.

Historian Robert Dallek has documented meetings with South Vietnamese diplomats in 1968 by Republican vice-presidential candidate Spiro Agnew and Anna Chennault, widow of Gen. Claire Chennault, the commander of "Flying Tiger" forces in China during World War II.

Mr. Dallek, author of "Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times 1961-1973," obtained tapes of the conversations from bugs the Johnson administration had placed in the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington.

Negotiations to end the Vietnam War were taking place in Paris at the time between the Johnson administration and the North and South Vietnamese.

Mr. Agnew and Mrs. Chennault "signaled the South Vietnamese that they would get a better deal with Richard Nixon as president instead of the Democrat" Hubert Humphrey, Mr. Dallek said.

"Johnson was furious and said that Nixon was guilty of treason," Mr. Dallek said, but neither he nor Mr. Humphrey disclosed the matter before the election, which Mr. Nixon won.