Wright Lies

Election '08: Stuck in a hole, Jeremiah Wright kept digging Monday at the National Press Club. His remarks were more than objectionable and divisive. They were lies. Why is Barack Obama shocked, shocked?

There. We used the "L" word, which is the only one that can apply to the assertions of the David Duke of the Democratic Party. It's a word Obama will not use as he tries to disown the man's words if not the bigot himself. Obama says he finds some of Wright's remarks objectionable, though he never says or is asked which ones and why. That we also find objectionable.

It's a lie that the U.S. government pumps drugs into the black community to entice black men into prison and to keep these communities "ground under." It's a lie that the AIDS virus was created in a government laboratory to kill black people.

Wright repeated these and other lies at the National Press Club and even added some new ones. On the AIDS lie, he offered no proof other than to say that, on the basis of our history, "I believe our government is capable of doing anything." So is he, apparently.

Wright added another lie -- that if we wanted to know if Saddam Hussein was using chemical and biological weapons, all we had to do is check our sales records: "We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people."

Wright stood by his assertion that America's chickens are coming home to roost. "Whatsoever you sow, that you shall also reap, " he said, adding: "You cannot do terrorism to other people and expect them never to come back on you."

In an April 13, 2003, sermon that Obama probably also missed hearing, Wright said: "We cannot see how what we are doing is the same thing al-Qaida is doing under a different color flag, calling on the name of a different God to sanction and approve our murder.

"Remember, it was soldiers of the 3rd Marine Regiment of Rome who had fun with Jesus, who was mistreated as a prisoner of war, an enemy of the occupying army stationed in Jerusalem to ensure the mopping up of Operation Israeli Freedom."

Wright rephrased this slightly at the National Press Club: "We have troops all over the world, just like Rome had troops stationed all over the world. That notion of imperialism is not the message of the gospel of the prince of peace, nor of God, who loves the world."

We prefer to think of Marines engaged in Operation Iraqi Freedom and its aftermath not as imperialist murderers but as heroes laying down their lives for their friends. Greater love has no man. To equate them with the terrorists of 9/11 is an obscenity Obama needs to condemn.

All the media find objectionable in all this is that people are beginning to say Emperor Obama has no clothes. Their ire is reserved for the "out of context" quoting of Obama's pastor, though we're not sure what the context could be.

Obama has an opportunity for a "Sister Souljah" moment here not merely by distancing himself from Wright's remarks but by condemning specific remarks in unequivocal terms. His press conference Tuesday didn't get it. It seemed to be more of a political CYA operation spawned by fears of a damaged candidacy.

Wright said nothing at the Press Club he hadn't said before. Obama could have said what he said Tuesday after Wright appeared with Bill Moyers on PBS last Friday or with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday or, for that matter, in the March 18 Philadelphia speech that made the liberal left swoon. But he didn't.

Why now? This too, as he now says about Wright, is a legitimate political issue.