RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Confirmed: MSM Holds Video Of Barack Obama Attending Jew-Bash & Toasting a Former PLO Operative

Jeepers! a retard! *shiver*

John McCain slammed The Los Angeles Times Wednesday for refusing to release a videotape that the newspaper's editors say shows Barack Obama praising a Chicago professor who served as a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was a U.S.-designated terror group.

Speaking to two Florida radio stations, the Republican presidential candidate suggested a double standard in reporting by the newspaper and said if he were hanging out with neo-Nazis he'd bet the tape would be made public.

The Times says it is standing by its promise not to show the tape, which it got from an anonymous source. The newspaper also has not provided a transcript of the 2003 farewell party for University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi. Among others in attendance at the soiree were former Weather Underground founders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

"Apparently this is a tape with a dinner that Mr. Ayers ... was at, and also ... one of the leading spokespersons for the PLO. Now, why that should not be made public is beyond me," McCain told La Kalle radio.

"I guarantee you, if there was a tape with me and Sarah Palin and some neo-Nazi or one of those, you think that that tape wouldn't be made public? Of course, Americans need to know, particularly about Ayers, and also about the PLO. So hopefully there will be enough pressure on the L.A. Times that it'll come out, but its really unfortunate that we have to go through this," McCain continued.

Palin too lambasted the newspaper for its inaction.

"If there's a Pulitzer Prize category for excelling in cow-towing, then the LA Times, you're winning," she said.

The LA Times told FOXNews.com that it won't reveal how it obtained the tape of Khalidi's farewell party, nor will the newspaper release it. Spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is not interested in revisiting the story. "As far as we're concerned, the story speaks for itself," she said.

The newspaper reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source.

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the Times' editor, Russ Stanton, said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

Asked about the party and his relationship with Obama, Khalidi refused Wednesday to discuss the matter.

"I am not speaking to the press at this time, and do not speak to Fox in any case, as I just wrote one of your colleagues," Khalidi wrote in an e-mail statement to FOXNews.com.

The Obama campaign called the impasse "just another recycled, manufactured controversy from the McCain campaign to distract voters' attention from John McCain's lock-step support for George Bush's economic policies."

"Barack Obama has been clear and consistent on his support for Israel, and has been clear that Rasheed Khalidi is not an adviser to him or his campaign and that he does not share Khalidi's views. Instead of giving lectures on media bias, John McCain should answer why, under his own chairmanship, the International Republican Institute repeatedly funded an organization Khalidi founded, the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, over the course of many years," said spokesman Tommy Vietor.

Referring to the polling company used in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1990s and hired by IRI, the nonprofit, nonpartisan democratic advocacy organization s overseen by Congress, the McCain camp said Vietor's allegation doesn't compare.

"Funding polling by a relatively well-respected organization that may or may not have had Khalidi on its board at the time does not come close to equating to hours of dinnertime conversations and glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner," retorted McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb.

The L.A. Times first reported on the relationship between Obama and Khalidi in April.

Click here to read the original LA Times story: 'Palestinians See a Friend in Barack Obama.'

In the article, it quoted Obama at Khalidi's going-away party, calling Khalidi his "friend and frequent dinner companion." At the time, Obama reminisced about dinners at the home of Khalidi and his wife Mona, who were leaving Chicago and heading to New York for Khalidi's new job at Columbia University.

The dinner talks had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world," the Times wrote, quoting Obama on the purported videotape.

The article went on to describe how Obama offered new hope to Palestinian Americans for a new U.S. policy on the Middle East and mentioned that one guest at the party compared "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Usama bin Laden because both had been "blinded by ideology."

Palin said she wants to know how Obama responded to derogatory comments said about Israel and America's support for its ally during the party.

"Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism instead of the victim. What we don't know, what we don't know, is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he now professes to support, and the reason is the newspaper that has the tape, The Los Angeles Times, refuses to release it," she said. "It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations looking after his best interests like that.�

The original article pointed out that the party, in which Khalidi encouraged guests to support Obama's run for the U.S. Senate, was videotaped and a copy had been obtained by The Times. It did not mention that the Times reporter and editors had vowed not to show the tape to anyone.

Sullivan said she would not give details of what else may be on the tape, adding that anyone interested in the video should read the newspaper's report, which was its final account.

"This is a story that we reported on six months ago, so any suggestion that we're suppressing the tape is absurd -- we're the ones that brought the existence of the tape to light," Sullivan said.

Khalidi, who from 1976 to1982 was reportedly a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, which was operating in exile from Beirut with the PLO, is currently the Edwards Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia.

When Columbia hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a guest speaker last year, Khalidi told The New York Times after the appearance that he was "embarrassed" that university president Lee Bollinger wasn't nicer to the head of the Islamic Republic during his visit.

A pro-Palestinian activist, Khalidi has been a fierce critic of American foreign policy and of Israel, which he has accused of establishing an "apartheid system" of government. The PLO advocate helped facilitate negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the early '90s, but he has denied he was ever an employee of the group, contradicting accounts in The New York Times and Washington Times.

Khalidi, who has a new book coming out in February titled "Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East," has been called "the foremost U.S. historian of the modern Middle East." That description appeared in a 2004 book review from University of Maryland professor Warren I. Cohen that appeared in the The Los Angeles Times.

The L.A. Times article in April noted that Khalidi was a professor at the University of Beirut at the time he was a mouthpiece for the PLO.

President Barack Obama's controversial pick for a top intelligence post blasted the "Israel lobby" on his way out the door Tuesday, intensifying a debate on the role Israel's allies played in the latest failed Obama appointment.

Charles W. Freeman Jr.'s abrupt withdrawal from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council came after he drew fire on a number of fronts - including questions about his financial ties to China and Saudi Arabia.

But the most heated opposition came from supporters of Israel - and Freeman's departure shows Obama's reluctance to signal a change to a U.S. policy in the Middle East that centers on standing beside Israel.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Obama jettisoned aides and backed off statements that appeared to imply a change in the Bush Administration's firm support for hawkish Israeli governments.

As president, Obama dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the Middle East last week with a tough message for the Palestinians, saying it was hard for Israel to make peace with people who are hurling rockets into their country.

And the attacks on Freeman, in the end, hinged primarily on the question of Israel, something the Democratic senators who helped break the back of the nomination Tuesday made clear.

"His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration," said Senator Chuck Schumer in a statement. "I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing."

Hours before the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, expressed his "regret" at Freeman's withdrawal, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told Blair he was concerned about "statements that [Freeman]'s made that appear either to be inclined to lean against Israel or too much in favor of China."

In particular, Freeman has described "Israeli violence against Palestinians" as a key barrier to Mideast peace, and referred to violence in Tibet last year - widely seen in the United States as a revolt against Chinese occupation - as a "race riot."

Freeman left no doubt about where he places blame in a written statement after his withdrawal.

"The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East," he wrote.

"The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth."

Freeman's departure echoed moments during last year's presidential campaign when Obama - generally willing to ignore the daily political tempests - abandoned aides and advisers who drew strong, persistent criticism on the question of Israel, which became, in the politics of the presidential campaign, a proxy issue for more general toughness on Islamic terrorism.

He forced an informal advisor, former Clinton administration peace negotiator Rob Malley, to resign after he met with Hamas officials on behalf of the International Crisis Group. And he distanced himself from Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been, briefly, a high-profile campaign figure. Later Obama, asked about his views on Israel, dismissed Brzezinski as "not one of my key advisers."

Pro-Israel groups and congressional critics were at pains to avoid labeling the Freeman withdrawal as a scalp for the "Lobby," stressing instead the role Freeman's financial ties played in his fall. Saudi royals financed Freeman's think tank, and he served on the board of a Chinese state oil company.

"I think he would have been able to withstand that if it was just a policy difference," said Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a leading congressional critic. "What was fatal was a lack of disclosure."

"Some may see the hand of the 'Israel Lobby,'" said Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. "But given Freeman's lack of intelligence experience, and his willingness to offend multiple constituencies, that would be a terribly simplistic view of the world."

But the campaign against Freeman certainly originated in pro-Israel circles - though Freeman was nominated after those concerns became known.

The first public opposition to the pick came on the blog of Steve Rosen, a former lobbyist for the pro-Israel group AIPAC who is facing trial for mishandling classified information. The story was driven on the website of The Weekly Standard by the magazine's blogger, Michael Goldfarb, a former aide to Senator John McCain and an outspoken Israel hawk.

But Jewish and pro-Israel organizations largely decided not to make the fight against Freeman a public crusade, though they were the first, and fiercest, Freeman opponents and made their views known privately.

"The vast majority of the Jewish community [were] very careful not to make this a Jewish community issue," said a top official at one major pro-Israel organization.

And indeed, some officials said Israel's allies might be winning the Freeman battle at the expense of larger goals.

"This is another example of what I call the 'cosmic oy vey,'" said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime Mideast policy official. "It's an inability of many in the pro-Israeli community to understand the fundamental commitment of this government to Israel."

"If the pro-Israeli community wants to worry about something, let them worry about the predicament the Israelis are now in" with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, he said.

But with the news of Freeman's withdrawal, some in that community were glad to take credit.

"What it showed is that there's no place for that kind of hostility to America's closest friend and most loyal ally," said a top official at a major Jewish organization who had worked against the choice.

Freeman and his allies were quick to place blame.

"If they withdraw his appointment prior to the conclusion of [Freeman's formal vetting] that would be seen as abject caving in on people who are extreme partisans of Israel," Nicholas Veliotes, a former Ambassador to Egypt, and one of 17 former diplomats who signed a letters supporting Freeman, said Tuesday before the withdrawal was announced.

Another prominent former diplomat who, like Veliotes, signed a letter supporting Freeman warned that the withdrawal would be perceived "right or wrong as a major victory of Israel lobby, and it will be read in a substantial part of the Arab or Palestinian world as 'these guys - [the Obama administration] -- can't broker a peace.' "

And Freeman warned in his emailed statement that the campaign against him ran counter to American interests.

"I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so," he wrote. "This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States."

One place where Freeman found no defenders, though, was the Obama White House - which prepared talking points and dossiers to defend other troubled nominees - but which stayed on the sidelines during the Freeman fight.

"The political people, and the [National Security Council] didn't seem to be in the loop on this," said one official who spoke to Obama aides about the question.