UPDATED US Politics: Obama is a Muslim (This Time They're Serious)

UPDATE 22 August: Reverend Franklin Graham, the son of legendary preacher Billy Graham and a prominent evangelist in his own right, stokes the flames in an interview on CNN: "I think the President's problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name....

"Now it's obvious that the president has renounced the prophet Mohammed, and he has renounced Islam, and he has accepted Jesus Christ. That's what he says he has done. I cannot say that he hasn't. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said....The Islamic world sees the president as one of theirs."

Juan Cole takes apart Graham's claim: "Unlike in Judaism, one is not born a Muslim. Rather, children of Muslim parents who embrace Islam typically recite the confession of faith around puberty and undertake to fulfill the obligations of Islamic law at that time."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzKs2b34rjQ[/youtube]

US Politics & Religion: A Way Forward on and beyond the Islamic Cultural Centre (Ezell)

UPDATE 0945 GMT: Chris McGreal of The Guardian profiles Pam Geller, whose blog Atlas Shrugs has been instrumental in promoting the notion of "The Islamization of America" and in converting the proposed Islamic Cultural Center in New York City into a crisis.

UPDATE 0900 GMT: And the Serious Parodies Keep Coming. James Taranto, has been given cover for years by The Wall Street Journal to re-work news into a cudgel against "liberals" --- one of his latest ventures is to endorse the "reporting" of The New York Post, "The developers of the Ground Zero mosque are refusing to flat out reject cash for the project from Holocaust-denying Iranian nuke nut Mahmoud Ahmadinejad".

So rather than consider how we have gotten to the point where CNN would post the large headline at the bottom of the TV screen, "W.H. [White House]: PRES. OBAMA ISN'T MUSLIM", Taranto sees Liberal Conspiracy: "The agenda behind these polls [showing 18% of Americans believe the President is a secret Muslim], and the liberal media's reporting on them, is to portray critics of President Obama as kooks and idiots."

Ever since November 2008, less than three weeks after the birth of EA, we have tracked --- tongue firmly in cheek --- the shocking story that Barack Obama is in fact a Muslim. We first brought you the truth courtesy of our favourite on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia. We were there when Obama outed himself (at least for our fellow "journalists"), "The Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives." We were there for the Obama bow-down to the Saudi king.

We were even there for the revelation --- which, thanks to the liberals who dominate the US media, never appeared --- that Obama was actually Osama.

However, amidst the current whipped-up controversy over the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City, perhaps it's time to suggest that this is not a tongue-in-cheek matter. The Washington Times, the second-largest newspaper in the US capital, allowed its staff member Jeffrey Kuhner free rein in Friday's edition. And they did so with the doctored photograph posted above:

President Obama has revealed his true nature. After 20 months in the Oval Office, he still remained a largely unknown figure. A picture is coming into focus now, and it should trouble all Americans. It is widely known that Mr. Obama is a post-national progressive. Yet he is also a cultural Muslim who is promoting an anti-American, pro-Islamic agenda. This is the real meaning of his warm - and completely needless - embrace of the Ground Zero Mosque.

At an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan at the White House, Mr. Obama told Muslim-Americans that he supports the building of an Islamic community center and mosque just two blocks away from where the Twin Towers were destroyed and nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered on Sept. 11, 2001. He later tried to back away from those comments. Mr. Obama said he was defending the right of religious freedom but not the "wisdom" of erecting the mosque.

Nonetheless, Mr. Obama has been clear: In his view, the Ground Zero Mosque should be built. There was no good practical reason even to comment on the issue. He had been silent for weeks as the controversy gathered steam. The overwhelming majority of the American people oppose the mosque - especially the families of the Sept. 11 victims. Politically, it is a loser - for him and his party. Yet he could not keep his mouth shut. Why?

Answer: For Mr. Obama, defending Islam has been a key priority of his presidency. In his famous speech in Cairo, Mr. Obama apologized to the Muslim world for the alleged "sins" and "mistakes" of America - even though no country has done more to liberate Islamic peoples than the United States, including campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. His aim was to engage the Islamic world on its terms and norms rather than defend America's values and national interests.

Mr. Obama openly bragged about his "Muslim background" and that his family had "followers of Islam." He spoke of his youth in Indonesia, his study of the Koran and the call to Islamic prayer. In short, he discovered his inner Muslim in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Arab street. The message was: I understand you, and I will usher in a new era of Islamic-American relations.

This Mr. Obama has done with a vengeance. He is the most Muslim-friendly president in the nation's history. He wants the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed. He demands that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, be tried in civilian court - with the full legal and constitutional protections given to U.S. citizens - several blocks from the World Trade Center site. He has ordered that the words "Muslim extremist," "Islamic terrorist" and "jihad" be cleansed from national security documents. He is openly anti-Israel. And he is prematurely withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, threatening to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Israeli military and intelligence officials concede that the administration - through diplomatic back channels - has told Jerusalem that Washington will not bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. The Jews are on their own in confronting the Holocaust-denying dictator President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr. Obama's tepid sanctions have failed to curb Iran's relentless march toward acquiring the nuclear bomb. This weekend, the Iranian nuclear power plant at Bushehr will begin fueling with enriched uranium. Thus, theocratic Iran is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power. It is only a matter of time before radical Islam also has the bomb.

Mr. Obama has done everything possible to appease the Muslim world - including, now, backing the Ground Zero Mosque....

Read rest of article....

Iraq Special: Obama Declares Victory. Sort Of. Depends How You Look at It. (The Onion)

Amidst all the chatter about the claimed withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq and whether it means "We Won" --- The Wall Street Journal may get the award for hyperbole with "Somewhere down the road, we trust that August 18, 2010 will be remembered as Victory in Iraq day" --- let's leave it to The Onion to set matters straight.

Or Not So Straight. Quite Muddled, Really:

Iraq Special: When a Withdrawal Is Not a Withdrawal (Alaaldin)
Iraq Special: When a War is Not Over (Bacevich)
Iraq: The Political Worries Beyond the US “Withdrawal” (Shadid)

Addressing troops at Andrews Air Force Base Tuesday, President Barack Obama claimed victory in Iraq, saying that formal combat operations in the region would end Aug. 31, and that the United States had emerged from the seven-year war triumphant, kind of.

"For nearly a decade, our mission in Iraq has been to root out those who would choose violence over peace, to create a stable Iraqi government, and to transfer power to an incorruptible civilian police force," Obama said. "And, in a manner of speaking, we sort of did some of that, right? More or less?"

"Granted, this is not the definitive, World War II–like victory most of us expected," Obama continued. "But there's a military triumph in there somewhere, I swear. You just have to look at it from the right angles."

According to the president, the relative victory could be credited to a number of achieved benchmarks, depending upon how strict one's definition of "achieved" is. Obama pointed to the democratic election of an Iraqi parliament currently being held together by a thread; the streets of Iraq being slightly less hellish than they were in 2006; and the fact that women are now, for the most part, free to move around the country so long as they don't make a big production out of it.

Obama also noted that during the war more Iraqi insurgents died than American troops, which, he admitted, isn't necessarily the best way to determine a war's victor, but is nonetheless still preferable to the other way around.

"By the end of this month, victory, to a certain extent, will be ours, and we can finally welcome our troops back home," Obama concluded. "That is unless they are one of the 50,000 U.S. soldiers who will have to stay in the region for the foreseeable future."

Following the president's address, a car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in Baghdad killing eight Iraqis and wounding 32.

Pentagon officials also declared the mission, in a sense, kind of sort of accomplished Tuesday, citing the handful of Iraqi hearts and minds that may have been won over by the U.S. occupancy, and the fact that Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki had not yet been assassinated.

"In cases where we were unable to rebuild infrastructure or quell violent civil unrest, it wasn't for lack of trying," Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said during last Sunday's taping of ABC's This Week. "And trying your best, one could argue, is technically a triumph in and of itself."

"And hey, Saddam Hussein isn't in power anymore," Odierno continued. "So that's something."

With the cessation of combat operations, and the declaration of what sources said couldn't be called a complete and utter failure because to do so would be to admit that the U.S. wasted $750 billion, lost 4,400 troops, and killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians for absolutely nothing, both Democrats and Republicans have attempted to take credit for the quasi-victory.

"President Obama deserves zero praise for this borderline accomplishment," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told reporters. "After all, if it weren't for President Bush ordering the initial invasion of Iraq and making it his central foreign policy initiative, we wouldn't be here right now awkwardly celebrating the muddled outcome of whatever the hell it is we've been doing over there for the past seven years."

Pentagon and White House sources said the American people should expect more wince-inducing victory-if-you-can-call-it-that celebrations 10 or 15 years from now when we kind of, but not really, win in Afghanistan.