Barack Obama Facts - Fact #6

Been a while since I did one of these and today I'm back with the start of what I'm sure will be either a real eye opener or a shit-throwing contest.

I will simply tell those that would throw shit to look into what I'm saying and quoting and then prove me to be a liar. I have no problem with admitting to being wrong if someone has some evidence to disprove what I've been saying.

All right then.

Barack Obama Fact #6 starts the Iraq "War" debate and whether or not he's ever been interested in ending it.

Today's fact comes from Paul Street's new book "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" and is located on pages 145 and 146 under the title "Obama's Mercenary Position".

In its entirety:

Another important thing [author and journalist Jeremey] Scahill discovered was that an Obama presidency would be likely to sustain the occupation through the continued deployment of controversial private security contractors in Iraq. As Scahill noted in an important expose entitled "Obama's Mercenary Position," published in early March 2008 by The Nation, the Obama campaign could not rule out using private military corporations like Blackwater Worldwide, Dyncorp, and Triple Canopy in Iraq. Obama refused to sign on to the Stop Outsourcing Security (SOS) Act proposed by Congresswoman and Obama ally Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), which would have banned the use of such force in U.S. "war zones" by January 2009.

This was no small matter. By early 2008, there were 100,000-plus contractors in Iraq, and some observers wondered if we were "facing what Democracy Now's Juan Gonzales called "the possibility that a Democratic president would in essence reduce the troops but increase the mercenaries." As Joseph Schmitz, a leading Blackwater executive said, "There is a scenario where we could as a government, the United States, could pull back the military footprint, and there would be more of a need for private security contractors to go in." Obama appeared ready to sign on to the possibility of such a scenario before any measures could be passed to hold private security firms accountable for crimes against Iraqis like the ones committed in September 2007, when Blackwater killed seventeen civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square. Thanks to numerous atrocities and regular indignities committed by private security forces since the beginning of the occupation, their presence had become an especially volatile source of "anti-American" sentiment in Iraq. Iraqi government officials have repeatedly demanded the banning of Blackwater and other corporate "security contractors" -- hated symbols and agents of the occupation -- from Iraq.

Understand that? The man of peace and hope and change believes that the US should allow killers to continue to roam the streets of Baghdad and the countryside of Iraq, in search of more victims. And they should do so unchecked.

How can Barack Obama claim to be "anti-war" when he's not opposed to thugs and murderers like Blackwater?

Such a bill of goods this country was handed. For those of us that got IT about Obama, all we have left to do is teach.

Back tomorrow with more lies that Obama told.