PrintJune 29, 2008
Wexler's hyperbole on Obama
Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) has often been hyperbolic* in touting the candidacy of Barack Obama for President. He has stated that Barack Obama "loves Israel" based on a single 5-day visit -- a visit that Barack Obama may have disparaged.
But the Congressman may well have outdone himself in an op-ed in yesterday's Palm Beach Post where he unequivocally states:
No one has been more resolute than Barack Obama in addressing the most serious security threat facing the U.S. and Israel-a nuclear Iran.
Obama's own words:
"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union... In Iran they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."
Then there are his policies which would eviscerate the very defense programs that our crucial for America and its allies in defending ourselves from Iran's nuclear threat:
Senator Obama has made quite clear that he intends to eviscerate our most advanced defense programs. In a message to Caucus 4 Priorities, a liberal pacifist organization, (available on YouTube), the Senator called for major cuts in defense spending, for slowing or suspending the development of future combat systems, for the abolition of spending on the "weaponizing of space" ("Star Wars") and the slashing of investment in our ballistic missile defense program. More broadly he promised to support the group's policies. These include:
- reducing the National Missile Defense program to a basic research program; cutting spending on platforms like the F-22 Raptor, the Virginia-class Submarine, the V-22 Osprey airplane/helicopter hybrid, the DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Army's Future Combat System. Also, the group advocates reducing America's force structure by eliminating two Air Force fighter wings and one aircraft carrier battle-group.
He also stated that two groups that serves as Iranian proxies and have killed many Israelis and threaten to wreak more havoc due to 40,000 missiles delivered to them by Iran have "legitimate grievances"
In Anne Bayefksy's own words (echoed by many critics of Barack Obama):
How does one begin a course for a presidential candidate in Terrorism 101? Where has Obama been for the past three decades during which the greatest threats to peace and security have moved beyond the sphere of state actors operating alone? After 9/11, why doesn't Obama recognize the capacity of relatively small entities to wreak havoc, at comparatively little cost, on a nation as large and strong as America?
Maybe Congressman Wexler needs to take that course.
* Of course, we see a lot of hyperbole when it involves Barack Obama-and some of it comes from the Senator himself. One example: "And nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti- Semitism than I have." To which ABC News Jake Tapper (one of the few serious level-headed journalist) responded:
Really? No one?Elie Wiesel? Simon Wiesenthal? Alan Dershowitz?No one?Wow.
When hyperbole is slathered on, what does that say about the truth?
