Obama campaign issues rebuttal to book's claims

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama hit back Thursday with a 40-page rebuttal to the best-selling book "The Obama Nation," arguing the author is a fringe bigot peddling rehashed lies.

Jerome Corsi's anti-Obama book, "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," claims the Illinois senator is a dangerous, radical candidate for president. The book is a compilation of all the innuendo and false rumors against Obama — that he was raised a Muslim, attended a radical, black church and secretly has a "black rage" hidden beneath the surface.

In fact, Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

The Obama campaign picked apart the book's claims in a rebuttal titled "Unfit For Publication," to be posted on the Obama campaign's rumor-fighting Web site, FightTheSmears.com. The title is a play on the book Corsi co-authored against 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military service called "Unfit For Command."

"Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. "His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda. We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal."

Corsi writes for World Net Daily, a conservative Web site whose lead headline Thursday was "Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice."

In a series of Web posts several years ago, Corsi said Pope John Paul II was senile and unconcerned about sexual molestation of boys, referred to Islam is "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion" and suggested Kerry was secretly Jewish.

Corsi apologized for the remarks and now says he didn't mean them and was simply trying to provoke discussion.

"Obama Nation" is published by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster that is run by Mary Matalin, the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney...[Open in new window]