'Distortion,' 'Rank Falsehood,' 'Seriously Misleading' and 'Outright Lying'

UPDATED, Again and bumped:

Today on MSNBC's "Hardball," Barack Obama continued his prevarications:

John McCain got upset today apparently because I had repeated exactly what he said, which is that we might be there [Iraq] for 100 years if he had his way.

That is not "exactly" what McCain said as you can see in the original post. RNC spokeswoman Liz Mair called Obama on his old-school deceive-and-distort politics:

Despite Barack Obama's apparent recognition the other day of his own twisting of John McCain's words, he continues to mischaracterize John McCain's statements with regard to a continued US troop presence in Iraq, having done so once again on MSNBC today. Given that the substance of Obama's assertions has been debunked by non-partisan fact-checking groups and media outlets alike, it's becoming increasingly hard to take seriously Obama's claims to offer a 'new' brand of politics. In fact, Obama is engaging in old-school deceive-and-distort politics of the type he purports to oppose, and doing so routinely.

UPDATED:The Washington Post's FactChecker agrees -- Obama's false claims do not pass The Pinocchio Test:

McCain has never talked about wanting a 100-year war in Iraq. … [T]hey have twisted his words, by claiming that he 'wants' to fight a 100-year war.

Original Post

Obama's "new kind of politics" amounts to nothing more than "distortion to the point of rank falsehood" and "seriously misleading voter -- if not outright lying to them."

Obama continues to falsely state that McCain "wants" another 100 years of war in Iraq. Even though at least two non partisan entities have found that Obama is grossly misrepresenting what Senator McCain actually said.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center's nonpartisan FactCheck.org "says Obama's claim that McCain wants 100 years in Iraq is a "serious distortion to the point of rank falsehood."

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Zachary Roth writes the "Press needs to call Obama on distortion of McCain’s statement:"

Obama is seriously misleading voters—if not outright lying to them—about exactly what McCain said. And some in the press are failing to call him on it.

Here’s McCain’s full quote, in context, from back in January:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing. As he says, we’ve had troops in South Korea for over fifty years, but few people think that means we’re still fighting the Korean War.

Obama's dishonesty is more apparent when you note that Obama has a very similar position, saying repeatedly some U.S. troops would remain for an indefinite period for "counterterrorism activities," which means combat troops. He said it during the Democrats presidential debate at Dartmouth on September 26, 2007:

RUSSERT: Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?

OBAMA: I think it's hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there.

What I can promise is that if there are still troops in Iraq when I take office -- which it appears there may be, unless we can get some of our Republican colleagues to change their mind and cut off funding
without a timetable -- if there's no timetable -- then I will drastically reduce our presence there to the mission of protecting our embassy, protecting our civilians, and making sure that we're carrying
out counterterrorism activities there.

I believe that we should have all our troops out by 2013, but I don't want to make promises, not knowing what the situation's going to be three or four years out.

Obama repeated it during the November 11, 2007 edition of NBC's "Meet The Press:"

MR. RUSSERT: I had asked you in one of the debates whether you’d make a commitment to have all American troops out of Iraq by the end of your first term, and you said you couldn’t do that. You said you had to fight al-Qaeda, had to make sure there was not genocide, try to secure the country. How, how many troops do you envision would have to remain in Iraq for some time to come?

SEN. OBAMA: Here’s what I’d do as president: We can get one to two brigades out per month safely. At that pace, we would have all our combat troops out in about 16 months from the time we initiate it. I would like to see it start now. It is not clear that that’s possible, given George Bush’s posture. But 16 months from the time we initiate it, we could have our combat troops out.

The only troops I would have in Iraq would have a very limited mission. Number one, to protect our embassy and our civilian, diplomatic corps. I don’t want Blackwater to be providing that security; I want our U.S. military to providing—to provide that security. I’m very skeptical about the use of private contractors when it comes to our national security. The only other mission, and this is a very narrow one, would be to engage in counterterrorism activity. If al-Qaeda in Iraq is reforming bases there, we should have the capacity to strike them. That would be it. Those would be the only troops that we would deploy.

Barack Obama's military adviser Gen. Tony McPeak, the former Air Force Chief of Staff also said we could be in Iraq a hundred years:

We’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.

Obama promised better than the "distortion to the point of rank falsehood" and "seriously misleading voters—if not outright lying to them," -- the deceptive practices of the old politics as usual. Obama's continued deviance, distortion and lies fail to match his rhetoric. It is long since time the main stream media overcome their admitted Obamania and call Obama on his prevarications.

As Lenin is said to have said: "A lie told often enough becomes truth." This lie needs to be stopped, now.

Also posted at Examining Presidential Politics and RedState

UPDATE: More at Baseball Crank.