The ignorance of Barack Obama

Jack Kelly:

HE GENERATES even more gaffes than Dan Quayle. "We have not exhausted our nonmilitary options in confronting the Iranian threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them," Sen. Barack Obama says on his Web site. "If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization."
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"Perhaps Mr. Obama is unaware that one of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's first acts was to freeze Tehran's efforts for securing WTO membership because he regards the outfit as 'a nest of conspiracies by Zionists and Americans,'•" wrote Amir Taheri in the Wall Street Journal this week.
In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice offered Iran a package of incentives including "improving Iran's access to the international economy, markets, and capital, through practical support for full integration into international structures, including the WTO."
.... shouldn't a candidate for president know these things?
Last week, I twitted Mr. Obama for saying he'd campaigned in 57 states, for not knowing that his home state of Illinois borders on Kentucky, and for claiming the Cuban Missile Crisis (October, 1962) was defused by President Kennedy's summit meeting with Nikita Khruschchev (June, 1961). Earlier, Mr. Obama said 10,000 people were killed when a tornado struck Greensburg, Kansas last year (the death toll was 12), and assumed Afghans speak Arabic (they don't).
After Mr. Obama took opposite sides on successive days last week on whether Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez should be engaged or isolated, ABC's Jake Tapper described him as "a one-man gaffe machine." And that was before his Memorial Day twofer.
Speaking in New Mexico, Mr. Obama seemed not to understand Memorial Day honors those who died in war, and claimed his uncle was one of the soldiers who liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. Since Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, and Mr. Obama's mom was an only child, this is unlikely.
When this misstatement was spotted by bloggers, the Obama campaign said the senator had in mind his great uncle, Charles W. Payne, who, the campaign said, had served in the 89th Infantry Division, which liberated Ohrdruf, a slave labor camp that was a satellite of Buchenwald. This explanation has satisfied most journalists. But Charles W. Payne is not listed on the roster of the 89th Infantry Division, perhaps because the Kansas State Historical Society says Charles W. Payne entered the Navy on Nov. 10, 1942.

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If the media was doing its job rather than enjoying the tingle running up their legs, it would not take conservative columnist and bloggers to notice these gaffes. Some in the media are starting to notice such as ABC's Jack Tapper. It is too bad many of his colleagues are not paying attention.

Obama combines arrogance with ignorance in the Iranian World Trade Organization gaffe. Like many Democrat he assumes the Bush administration has not succeeded in negotiations with Iran because of its own failures and not the intransigence of the Iranian religious bigots. This is despite Iran's clearly stated intentions to never give up its nuclear ambitions no matter what they are offered.