Rant of the Week - Debunking the Obama - Odinga Connection

It shouldn’t have surprised me. I should have seen this one coming. I read this post on the Denver Post forum the other day:

Yahoo "Raila Odinga Sharia Law". Obambi campaigned for this murdering thug knowing he had signed a pact to institute sharia law in Kenya if elected. This thug is behind the violence going on in Kenya now.

(Here's the tread. I post as 'niko.' You can tell the idiot worked me up, as I'm usually never this agressive.)

Here are two blogs which flesh out these lies. They're quite entertaining (albeit frustrating).
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/kenyas_killing_fields/index.html
http://caosblog.com/7071


Despite the fact that a Google search turns up more lies than truth, there is little in this statement that is true. Obama's perceived support for Odinga may have arisen from a speech he gave to university students in Nairobi during his 2006 visit. Obama spoke out against corruption in President Kibaki's government. Because Odinga is Kibaki's main political rival, Obama's criticism was misconstrued to mean that he had endorsed Odinga.

Obama did meet with Odinga, but there’s no proof of any endorsement. Obama has much support in Kenya, where he also enjoys a rock-star status. Raila took advantage of this for his campaign and tried to portray Obama's trip to Kenya as a personal endorsement. He even claimed Obama was his cousin, which is also false, showing a pattern of lying to make himself closer to Obama than what’s really the case. So although it may have been possible that Obama supported Odinga, there’s no proof of Obama “campaigning for” him.

The bit about signing an agreement to institute sharia law in Kenya is also unsupported. There is a doctored document on the internet, but wikileak refutes the allegation, adding:

Wikileaks’s analysis aside, it doesn't take very advanced math, wikipedia or googling skills to recognize that risking up to 80% of the vote (Kenya's Christian majority) to cater to a minority of 10% (its Muslims) doesn't add up.

There are claims from these idiots Odinga is a radical Muslim, which illustrates the pundits’ level of understanding of the subject.

Okay, so these assertions are lies. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say he did support Odinga’s presidential bid. The important thing to remember is that in 2006, while Odinga was a typical corrupt politician, his hands were fairly clean at this point. Obama even spoke out against tribal politics during his visit:

Ethnic-based politics has to stop. It’s rooted in a bankrupt idea that the goal of politics is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to ones own family, ones own tribe, or ones own circle of friends with little regard for public good.

Ethnic violence erupted in Kenya over a year after Obama’s visit and any fantasy endorsement. There is no proof of who facilitated the deaths of over a thousand innocent Kenyans. However, there’s little doubt, in my mind at least, that Odinga was a major orchestrator of this violence, along with President Kibaki and other prominent politicians. So calling Odinga a thug after the election is a fair analysis. However, no one even bothers to make up lies about how Obama might have shown support for Odinga after his hands were bloodied. The only evidence of any communication is when Obama took time off his campaign in New Hampshire to make a five-minute phone call to Odinga, urging him to talk with President Kibaki in order to avoid more bloodshed. So the only connection was that Obama was urging Odinga to stop the volence. That doesn’t sound like supporting a thug to me.

After searching through the first few pages of my Google search, I blelieve this is the first blog post stating the truth about Obama’s connection to Odinga. That’s fucking whacked. Thankfully, there are a few news articles that state the truth:

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2008/01/the_kenya_conne.html

http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/612/obama_and_the_kenya_deception/