yes decades ago, before the advent of TV etc. hence my alluding to kennedy and nixon.

FDR never would have had a chance at getting elected today.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

OH MY GAWD!

... and to think I was going to vote for this clearly unAmerican terrorist supporter! Yep, how dare this guy even run for office and be not know the entire history of WW2? He should be flogged, I tell ya!

I'd say your sarcasm is misplaced if you read the posts in the thread ala LBS and I's exchange etc. but I am past making larger points for you.


anyway heres one I cannot help thinking about-Obama argued that our military's Arabic translators in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan: 'We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan,' he claimed.
Afghans don't speak Arabic.
Media Research Center [cyber-html@mail.mediaresearch.org]

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

On that one, I have to say that it could have been a slip-up, but he is also (perhaps coincidentally) correct. We do need more Arabic translators in general, and they are needed in Afghanistan as well.

In Afghanistan, we are generally not fighting against Afghanis; we are mostly fighting against foreign fighters (Saudis, Egyptians, Yemenites, etc.) who make up the core of Al Qaeda and their cohort flunkies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They likely use Arabic as a common language since they all know it natively or from their studies of the Koran.

I'm not sure Obama would have thought all this out just to make a point in a speech, but I think people pushing this "gaffe" are incorrect if they assume we need no Arabic translators in the Afghan theatre. It's much less important to score political points than it is to employ an informed strategy in combating terrorist organizations.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

Agreed but I am quite amazed at how some Obama-worshipers are dismissing this as a mere slip up or error; if Hillary made such a mistake she would be savaged by these same people.

1) How do you confuse Buchenwald with Auschwitz? The name's are not at all similar in sound/pronunciation.

2) How do you confuse a labor camp that saw an estimated 56,000+ people die largely due to the Typhus disease with an alleged extermination camp where 1.5 to 4 million (who knows what the casualty number is this year) Jews were supposedly annihilated in a systemic campaign of genocide?

I just do not buy the argument that Obama made a simple boo-boo.

Oh, I agree, but you get my point.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

I do, to an extent....we all know what the latest great state of our education system is in. I am not surprised at all he doesn't know the difference. I do, I would bet many more then than now , say those who attended public school ( though he did have years of private education as I did as well) 30 years ago or more, would know the difference.

I do agree he may have been confused and as all Pols do, went with the sexier version, Ordourf doesn’t sound sexy and doesn’t grab the imagination.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

I am offended by Obama's revisionism! My uncle actually died at Auschwitz; he slipped and fell out of the guard tower!

OMG. That's pretty bad. (but very quick, so I can appreciate it ).

This is in a completely different category than Hillary's dodging bullets on the tarmac. I can easily see it happening when you make a lot of speeches, and you want to make a point about treatment of veterans (which is what the speech was about), and you have a great-uncle that you never knew well but have been told stories about, and you know that great-uncle liberated a Nazi concentration camp and suffered PTSD afterwards, and you're not that familiar in detail with the military history of WWII, what's the first Nazi camp that comes to anyone's mind? Auschwitz, of course. Oops!

Being a history buff myself, as is Imperator, I immediately saw the mistake -- very, very unlikely Obama had a great-uncle in the Red Army -- but it's not that big a deal, except to incorrigible nit-pickers like us. Certainly there's no reason to believe he made the story up, and that would be the only thing to get significantly upset about.

Incidentally, while it's true as Frank says that Buchenwald and Auschwitz served different purposes, the experience of liberating one would be similar to liberating the other. The main differences were that Auschwitz was bigger, and that it included the gas chambers and crematoria where Jews were mass-murdered. But troops liberating the camp would not have seen that happening, they would instead have encountered lots of emaciated prisoners who were being worked to death. (Since Auschwitz wasn't just a death camp, it was also a labor camp; Jewish arrivals were separated into two groups, one put to death in the gas chambers, the other housed in the barracks and put to work.) Ghastly, but the same would have been seen at Buchenwald, too. So there's every reason to believe Obama's story was accurate, except for the goof about the name of the camp.

I just heard on the radio that this is, in fact, the second time Obama has made a mistake relating to his relatives wartime experience involving Auschwitz. Looking for more sources.

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

Sure enough, back in 2002, he made (roughly) the same claim. Odd that he wouldn't have figured this out back then.

Barack Obama's Iraq Speech - Wikisource

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

If this is reliable information, then I must conclude that it was no slip; it was deliberate.

Not much hope and change there.

You can find the very same speech on his website in which he describes his grandfathers "fellow" (American) troops discussing their experiences at Auschwitz which obviously never happened:

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/warspeech.pdf

The kicker is Treblinka was also in Poland and would not have been liberated by U.S. troops. In addition the allies handed Eastern Europe over to Stalin so I do not think they cared very much about fighting for freedom or to spread democracy; Barack Obama is a blithering ignorant idiot.

This site has the line in question removed: Barack Obama's Stirring 2002 Speech Against the Iraq War

However, this site doesn't:Barack Obama’s Speech on Iraq - 2002 « The Good Democrat

Neither does this one: Brent Budowsky: Obama's Speech Opposing The Iraq War - Politics on The Huffington Post

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.