The audacity of no fact checking

By David Singh

In Berlin, Obama was just making up facts! His fiction about Belfast is even worse than his story about Airlift flights turning back.

As mistakes go, I would say this is the ultimate. A prepared speech (not an off-the-teleprompter gaffe), announced days in advance to the world. How is a mistake this huge possible? There is no chance he misread (misspoke), otherwise, there would be no mention of Belfast in that portion of the speech.

Not only does Obama not realize that there are more "peace walls" then ever in Belfast, but his entire speech writing and campaign consulting team did not catch this error -- not to mention the adoring world press - who had access to his speech text prior to the Berlin speech today. This would not have gotten my attention while listening to his speech, but I just happened to stumble on an article a few weeks back (not the USA Today article below) and the Belfast walls were fresh in my mind.

Obama speech text:

"Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together;"

Quoting from a 5/3/2008 USA Today article:

"Ten years after peace was declared in Northern Ireland, one might have expected that Belfast's barriers would be torn down by now. But reality, as usual, is far messier. Not one has been dismantled. Instead they've grown in both size and number."