Obama’s Iraq. You’ve been Bamboozled! Hoodwinked! Okey-Doked! …again (Updated)

The headlines are full of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)’s most recent—and astonishing—180^o degree turn. Sorry, folks, but the Grand Master of Bamboozling, Hoodwinking, and Okey-Doking gotcha.

First, read for yourself Obama’s 6-page Iraq Fact Sheet “Turning the Page in Iraq” posted on his official website (pdf).

Then, listen to Sen. Obama yesterday, July 3, 2008: “On Iraq—Obama Flip-Flops Twice The Same Day”

According to his Obama for Illinois website, Barack Obama, on Wednesday, October 23, 2002, posted an entry entitled “Obama: I’m not against wars but”, which states that it was a column published Wednesday, October 30, 2002, in the Hyde Park Herald. It is introduced as a speech Obama had given “recently” at a downtown rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza which was attended by “several Hyde Parkers.”

As can clearly be seen, the date of the website entry was twleve days AFTER the Joint Resolution (H.J.114) to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq, commonly known as the AUMF, which was passed October 11, 2002.

---

As there is no official record of the speech itself—the text was not reported elsewhere in the media or captured on audio or video tape—the date of Obama’s speech has also been reported to have occurred on October 2, 2002, a much more convenient date.

However, if, in fact, the date of the speech was on October 2, 2002, Obama made no mention in it of the upcoming AUMF vote.

Update: RW/RBO posted the following on April 28, 2008.

Fast forward to October 2, 2002, when Barack Obama delivered his then little-noticed but now-famous speech at a Chicago antiwar rally. On the event’s fifth anniversary, activist Marilyn Katz, one of the rally’s organizers, and now a member of Sen. Obama’s national finance committee, posted the following on the blog of Chicagoans Against the War & Injustice (CAWI), which she had “put together”, relying upon “some of her old contacts she met organizing anti-war demonstrations for Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s.”

The rally in Chicago on October 2nd, 2002 was not organized by a politician or a recognized political force. Quite the contrary. It was organized by a loose group of friends—veterans of the women’s movement, the student movement, the civil rights movement, who alarmed by the prospect of what they considered an unwise and unfounded march to war and aware, yet seeing no one—from politicians to pundits to the press daring to speak out against a seemingly all-powerful republican juggernaut,—and fearing that if they did not speak out the war, the very room for disagreement with the White House on any issue would vanish, took it upon themselves to reclaim the public space for dissent.

Meeting in a living room in Chicago just ten days earlier, we chose to act agreeing that on October 2nd, 2002, we would assemble in Chicago’s Federal Plaza to stand against the war. With a gut feeling that other Americans also thought the invasion of Iraq was foolhardy, if not immoral and absurd, but with no assurance than anyone would come to a demonstration we agreed that “If we were five, we would be five.” “If we were without any elected officials, we would be an involved citizenry. But we would take a stand.”

But we were not alone. In fact nearly 3,000 people assembled in Federal Plaza on that day responding to the flurry of emails (a new organizing technology for us) that seemingly liberated people from their sense of isolation and offered them the opportunity of collective action – of community. Black, Latino, White, veterans of the peace and women’s movements, the 60s, high school and college youth, community activist—a mosaic of the City. Long time leaders like Jesse Jackson, Juan Andrade and Julie Hamos and a new voice…. not yet known to the crowd, to the media or to the nation…. the voice of State Senator Barack Obama.”

Note the article’s sources were a March 25, 2008, NPR interview with rally participants Marilyn Katz and Juan Andrade and Bill Glauber, then a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, who had not mentioned Obama’s speech in 2002 because he was focused on Jesse Jackson; Marilyn Katz, in an October 2, 2007, CAWI article (which shows a rally picture from October 2, 2000); and a February 27, 2008, New Republic article by Michael Crowley, who got his information from Marilyn Katz and Jennifer Spitz, another one of the rally’s organizers, and Dan Shomon, Obama’s campaign manager in 2002.

Even though he was one of a few politicians who attended the event, there were no contemporaneous accounts of the rally and Obama’s speech posted on CAWI’s website; no media accounts reported quoting or citing Obama’s speech either then or later; no photographs published anywhere and apparently nobody has any photographs tucked away in their scrapbooks or memory albums.

In fact, the first actual mention by Katz and members of the organizing group was not made until October 2, 2007, the fifth anniversary of the 2002 event. Even then Katz’s mention regarding Obama was that his was a “new voice … not yet known to the crowd” but nothing more.

Nearly five years after the speech, Agence France Presse wrote August 7, 2007: “Obama spoke out against the Iraq war before the US invasion — though he was not a US senator at the time.”

As AFP points out, Obama “did not face therefore the high-stakes choice which confronted fellow [future presidential] candidates” Sens. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and former Sen. John Edwards, who all voted in October 2002 to give President George W. Bush the “power to wage war in Iraq.”

Obama is quoted from the day before the 2004 Democratic National Committee convention as saying:

“On Iraq, on paper, there’s not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago. There’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.”

See more at SourceWatch.

Follow this unfolding story—then and now—as reported both by the MSM and the blogosphere:

Then:

William Finnegan, The Candidate, The New Yorker, May 31, 2004.

Mike Allen, ‘Window of opportunity’, Playbook/The Politico, October 2, 2007.

Jeff Zeleny, Obama Sees a ‘Complete Failure’ in Iraq, New York Times, August 22, 2007.

Pamela Jones, Obama: I Will End War In 2009. Huge Crowd Turns Out To Hear Presidential Candidate In Gary , CBS2Chicago, April 10, 2008.

Sen. “Barack O’bomb ‘em”, RezkoWatch, April 28, 2008.

, RezkoWatch, June 23, 2008 (repost fromApril 28, 2008).

Let’s talk about Obama’s 2006 trip to the Middle East, RezkoWatch, June 28, 2008.

Now:

Jonathan Weisman, Obama Softens on Iraq Withdrawal Timeline, The Trail/Washington Post, July 3, 2008. h/t PPM

Tom Bevan, Obama Might ‘Refine’ Iraq Timeline, RealClearPolitics, July 3, 2008.

Allahpundit, Obama: I’m willing to “refine my policies” on Iraq; Update: “Quagmire,” says ABC; Update: Why now? Update: Obama clarifies, “I intend to end this war”, Hot Air, July 3, 2008.

Ed Morrissey, O’Hanlon: Obama’s Iraq policy now “ambiguous”, Hot Air, July 3, 2008.

Richard Fernandez, Pirouette, The Belmont Club, July 3, 2008.

Larry Johnson, Obama, The Fast Change Bamboozler, No Quarter, July 3, 2008.

A Clarification, Iowahawk, July 3, 2008.

John Batchelor, Blackberry Day at Fargo, JohnBatchelorShow, July 3, 2008.

Mike Allen, Obama to ‘refine’ Iraq plan, The Politico, July 3, 2008.

Jonathan Weisman, Obama May Consider Slowing Iraq Withdrawal. Candidate Says He Remains Committed to Ending War, Washington Post, July 4, 2008.

Charles Krauthammer, A Man of Seasonal Principles, Washington Post, July 4, 2008.

Peter Nicholas, Republicans seize on Obama’s comments on Iraq, Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2008.

Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny, Obama Fuels Pullout Debate With Remarks, New York Times, July 4, 2008.

Jennifer Loven, Obama says Iraq trip could refine his policy, RealClearPolitics, July 4, 2008.

James Joyner, Obama to ‘Refine’ Iraq Deadline, Keep it Exactly Same, Outside the Beltway, July 4, 2008.

Daniel Politi, The Long Shift, Slate, July 4, 2008.