A couple of Goons took it upon themselves to write to the BBC regarding the story they’d published yesterday. Goon Eglamore got a response:

Thank you for your email and the points you raise. Let me assure you that no bias was intended, even if the story gave you that impression. The story was written from initial takes on the news wires that spoke of Mr Obama’s readiness to send troops in to Pakistan - stories that were later amended to speak of military force. We should have gone back to this story and checked his actual words.

We have gone through the transcript of his speech and double-checked the quotes. The story has now been re-written to make it clear that Mr Obama was talking about using military force rather than a troop invasion.

We accept that the story should have been better written and checked, and we do appreciate your comments on this.

Kind regards
Americas desk
BBC News website

Maybe there’s hope, yet.

On August 1, Obama gave this policy speech. The BBC and a lot of news agencies mischaracterized it, implying or outright stating he would march in to Pakistan.

From ABC News:

On Wednesday, Obama delivered a major anti-terrorism speech in which he essentially threatened the government of Pakistan that as president he would attack al Qaeda targets in the country with or without the permission of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will,” Obama said.

I’m not so sure that’s a “threat,” but OK. More importantly, click over to page 2 of that link:

Clinton did not take issue with that as an option, but suggested Obama should not have been delivering such messages publicly.

“I am concerned about talking about it,” she said. “I think everyone agrees that our goal should be to capture or kill bin Laden and his lieutenants but how we do it should not be telegraphed and discussed for obvious reasons.”

Clinton didn’t seem to have any problem “talking about” the subject on Wednesday, when interviewed on American Urban Radio News Network.

“I’ve long believed that we needed tougher, smarter action against terrorists by deploying more troops to Afghanistan, and if we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured,” she said.

She agrees with what he said, just not the fact that he said it. Brilliant.

It’s bad enough when American media misrepresents the candidates, but now we’re getting it from across the pond.

Obama ‘would strike’ in Pakistan

Mr Obama said Pakistan must do more to end terrorist operations
US presidential candidate Barack Obama has said he would order military action against al-Qaeda in Pakistan without the consent of Pakistan’s government.
Mr Obama made the comments in a speech outlining his foreign policy positions.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said any threat to act against al-Qaeda from within its territory should not be used for political point scoring.

Earlier this month, Mr Obama’s chief rival, Hillary Clinton, described him as “naive” on foreign policy.

The attack from Mrs Clinton came after a televised debate between Democrat presidential hopefuls.

During the debate Mr Obama said he would be willing to meet leaders of states such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran without conditions.

‘Terrible mistake’

In his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, Mr Obama said General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, must do more to end terrorist operations in his country.

If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will
Barack Obama

If not, Pakistan would risk a troop invasion and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid during an Obama presidency, the candidate said.

“It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005,” he said, referring to reports that the US had decided not to launch a strike for fear of harming ties with Pakistan.

“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Mr Obama said.

Except that’s not what he said. He said this:

As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.

And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas, my Administration will increase America’s commitment. We must help Pakistan invest in the provinces along the Afghan border, so that the extremists’ program of hate is met with one of hope. And we must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair — our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally.

The subject he is referring to here are known al-Qaeda that we have the intelligence on already. The problem with the area of Pakistan that Obama is referring to is that it is generally lawless except for the tribal rule in that area. (It’s right along the boarder of Afghanistan.) It’s a region that Pakistan has had trouble controlling and has made very little effort to actually reign in. He’s not talking about marching troops in to the center of Islamabad; he’s talking about going over the mountains in to Waziristan to capture or kill bin Laden.

Which our current president should have done.

The rest of his speech outlining his foreign policy goals vis-a-vis the war on terror can be found here, and is really good.

Edit: Goon savetheclocktower adds this:

At no point did Obama say he’d do this unilaterally, and I don’t understand why people assume that. If the intelligence were compelling, there’d be half a dozen other nations that would be on board. We’re not the only ones pissed off at bin Laden.

There’s a scrap going on over a foreign policy question asked at the CNN/YouTube debates.

QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.

In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.

Now, Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire. And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them and they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country, but we had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward.

And I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them. We’ve been talking about Iraq — one of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria because they’re going to have responsibilities if Iraq collapses.

They have been acting irresponsibly up until this point. But if we tell them that we are not going to be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that they are going to have to carry some weight, in terms of stabilizing the region.

COOPER: Senator Clinton?

CLINTON: Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year. I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are.

I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes. I don’t want to make a situation even worse. But I certainly agree that we need to get back to diplomacy, which has been turned into a bad word by this administration.

And I will purse very vigorous diplomacy.

And I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way. But certainly, we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.

The next day, this turns out to be the opening salvo of a war of words.

Clinton called Obama’s comments “irresponsible” and “naive.”

Obama countered by accusing the Clinton campaign of hatching a “fabricated controversy” and suggested that her position put her on the same track as the Bush administration.

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton claimed: I think it is a terrible mistake for our president to say he will not talk with bad people. [Associated Press, 4/23/07].

And it goes on.

“The notion that I was somehow going to be inviting them over for tea next week without having initial envoys meet is ridiculous,” he said in an interview outside his Senate office. “But the general principle is one that I think Senator Clinton is wrong on, and that is if we are laying out preconditions that prevent us from speaking frankly to these folks, then we are continuing with Bush-Cheney policies.”

And on…

SEN. CLINTON: “Well, this is getting kind of silly. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life but I’ve never been called George Bush or Dick Cheney certainly. We have to ask what’s ever happened to the politics of hope?

It’s a bit of a media-manufactured fight. So let’s see what the original YouTube poster who asked the question thinks about all of this:

So we called Stephen Sixta, the 59-year-old California video producer who asked on YouTube about the candidates’ willingness to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Cuba, N. Korea and Venezuela. He said it’s been pretty much “surreal” to spend the last week hearing the question he wrote repeated in some kind of endless loop by everyone from Wolf Blitzer to Rush Limbaugh.

His bottom line: He liked Obama’s answer, and he thought Hillary misconstrued what he meant by “preconditions” in acting like Obama had agreed to meet Fidel and Chavez with no diplomatic groundwork whatsoever. He said his question just meant there shouldn’t be a requirement of a change in a country’s behavior as a condition of talking to them.

“My question had something I wanted my government to achieve. I wanted my country to go out and speak to countries we don’t speak to,” Sixta said. “When the attacks started on Obama they were attacks on my question and what I wanted. They made me feel bad.”

The Associated Press ran this story yesterday asking:

The voices are growing louder asking the question: Is Barack Obama all style and little substance? The freshman Illinois senator began his campaign facing the perception that he lacks the experience to be president, especially compared to rivals with decades of work on foreign and domestic policy. So far, he’s done little to challenge it. He’s delivered no policy speeches and provided few details about how he would lead the country.

No policy speeches? What about this one on March 21? Or this one on March 2? Those are both specific foregin policy speeches. There’s this one from January 25, right after he started his exploratory committee, calling for universal health care.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the Associated Freakin’ Press couldn’t look at his issues page and see the specifics of what he’s proposed thus far.

Obama Disputes Bill Clinton’s Take on War Views

According to an item in the gossip column Page 6 in today’s New York Post, Mr. Clinton said at a private fund-raiser Tuesday that Mr. Obama was asked in 2004 how he would have voted on the Iraq war resolution of 2002, had he been in the Senate at the time. According to people who attended the fundraiser, Mr. Clinton was said to have quoted Mr. Obama as saying, “I’m not sure,” and then criticized The New York Times for not highlighting that position as ambivalence over the war.

Man, if only there were some sort of photographic evidence to refute this…