Obama Did Not Offer to Apologize for Hiroshima
Here we go again. Based on a (probably deliberate) misreading of a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, the right wing media are having yet another attack of the vapors. Linked at Drudge Report...
Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one?
The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama’s State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to “express its condolences” to his family.
There is only one tiny problem with Drudge, Investors and the right-wing nutbars who echoed the story above. The very cable these honorless serial liars are using from Wikileaks says no such offer of an apology was ever made. In fact the Japanese sated that should anyone in the administration be thinking of apologizing, don't.
It never stops. No matter how many Al Qaeda terrorists the Obama administration eliminates, these people just keep feeding the right wing base fairytales about Obama’s “weakness” and his “apology tours.”
Here’s the truth, not that it matters in the wingnut echo chamber:
A senior White House official asserts to ABC News that there was never any plan for the president to apologize for Hiroshima. The cable does not state that the idea was from the U.S. Rather, Roos writes that Yabunaka thought that following President Obama’s call earlier that year for a world free of nuclear weapons, anti-nuclear groups would speculate as to whether he would visit Hiroshima.
In other words, there’s absolutely no evidence that this “apology” was proposed by the Obama administration. None. Here’s the actual cable they’re freaking out about:
VFM Yabunaka pointed out that the Japanese public will have high expectations toward President Obama’s visit to Japan in November, as the President enjoys an historic level of popularity among the Japanese people. Anti-nuclear groups, in particular, will speculate whether the President would visit Hiroshima in light of his April 5 Prague speech on non-proliferation. He underscored, however, that both governments must temper the public’s expectations on such issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a “non-starter.” While a simple visit to Hiroshima without fanfare is sufficiently symbolic to convey the right message, it is premature to include such program in the November visit.
The official U.S. line of apologizing for Hiroshima is that the U.S. will not apologize until the Japanese make several apologies that include Pearl Harbor, the March to Bataan and some other WW II atrocities. The Obama administration is sticking to those terms.
Ron Paul Calls Out Herman Cain For Lie Over Fed Audit During GOP Debate
Open Letter to that 53% Guy
Bachmann, Gingrich and WSJ agree: The financial crisis is poor people's fault. Maybe these right-wing freaks keep spreading the same falsehoods because they don't understand the truth.
