Not so fast, Senator MCcain. You accuse Barack Obama of cavorting with a man you accuse of being a terrorist sympathizer and being a former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman. But it turns out, according to records obtained by the Washington Post that McCain chaired an organization which donated nearly $500,000 to a group headed by Columbia University Professor of Arab Studies, Rashid Khalidi, the man the Arizona senator brands as a terrorist sympathizer.
This blog is about Barack Obama and next week's presidential election, so it won't render an opinion about Khalidi (whose name McCain's running mate Sarah Palin today mistakenly pronounced as "ka-LAH-dee," while attacking Obama) his beliefs or the PLO. But McCain's hypocrisy is striking. Here are the facts, as rendered by the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs:
"McCain is treading on tricky ground when he cites the Khalidi case as an example of Obama consorting with terrorist sympathizers. The Obama campaign was quick to point out that an organization co-founded by Khalidi has received large sums of grant money from the International Republican Institute, chaired by McCain since 1993. One such grant was for $448,873 in 1998 to assist the Center for Palestine Research and Studies in its work in the West Bank.
This is a case of guilt by association gone haywire. Both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have had extensive dealings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is much more closely identified with the PLO than Rashidi ever was. Verdict: the McCain camp has wildly exaggerated the significance of the Obama-Ayers-Khalidi triangle."
For more of the story, click the link below.
washingtonpost.com
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