Email: Is Barack Funded by Ties to the Middle East?

One of the more recent email hoaxes to make the rounds regarding Barack Obama calls into question any number of items regarding his background, most notably things like "how did he pay for college and grad school?", "How did he buy his house?", and others.

Other sites have already done a decent job of debunking this email, including this article from Snopes.com, and our article on Tony Rezko (which cites further verifiable sources). We won't bother to rehash that information here; you can check it yourself.

However, more recent versions of the email have had some additional points added to them that are worth addressing separately.

First, the email mentions an out-of-context quote of Obama saying, "my Muslim faith". This quote was part of an interview with George Stephanopoulos. During the interview, Obama was talking about conservative smears against him insinuating that he is a Muslim, and how (remarkably) the McCain campaign has not brought up the issue. When heard or read in context, the intended meaning of the quote becomes clear.

(Apart from which, all rumors about Obama secretly being a Muslim have been widely researched and debunked. Obama is a long-time Christian, was never a Muslim, and did not attend a Islamic religious school when growing up. Here is one source; there are many others you can find via Google.)

The last point of note is in reference to his close advisor, Valerie Jarrett. It says that she was born in Iran – seemingly intending to lead the reader to the conclusion that all Iranians are Muslims and/or terrorists and cannot to be trusted. Leaving aside the racist undertones, the statement is extraordinarily misleading because of what it doesn't tell you. Ms. Jarrett WAS in fact born in Iran... to American parents! Her father was a medical doctor, and worked for several years back in the 1950's at a hospital for the poor in Iran, long before that country was part of the "axis of evil".

Here is an excellent article on Valerie Jarrett. It is long, but pages 4-5 provide the relevant information regarding the above claim.

Does Obama Hang Out with Terrorists?

This claim was sufficiently debunked during the primary elections, which should have been the end of it. But the McCain campaign has recently trotted it out again in a desperate attempt to smear Sen. Obama and call his judgment into question. In particular, Sarah Palin has mentioned it at nearly every public appearance she has made in the past week.

Here are the facts. The man in question, Bill Ayers, was a member of a radical organization in the 1960's (when Obama was a young child) that protested the Vietnam war. Today he is a respected professor of education at the University of Illinois. To refer to him in the present tense as a terrorist is highly deceiving. In any case, Obama's actual ties to the man are tenuous at best:

• They lived in the same neighborhood in Chicago.
• They once served on the board of a charitable organization in the late 90's.
• Obama once attended a democratic fundraiser at Ayers' home -- 12 years ago -- long after Ayers had turned his life around and become an educator.

That's it. They are not friends or "pals"; barely acquaintances.

What's even more interesting about the Sarah Palin claim is that she said she was simply quoting an article in the New York Times. But that article clearly debunks the "terrorist pal" theory:

"The two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "

So either Sarah Palin is purposely lying, or she simply can't read and process information as well as the average sixth grader. You decide which is worse.

UPDATE 10/12: We've added a few more sources below, all debunking the claims being made by McCain/Palin. What's more disturbing is that their ads continue to run on TV, radio, and the Internet, despite it having now been shown conclusively that it is full of lies.

Additional Sources:

• FactCheck.org: "He Lied" About Bill Ayers?
• CNN: Is Obama Palling Around with Terrorists?
• Newsweek: Assessing Ayers: Innuendo vs. Information