Obama Speech Rather Odd Collection of Comments and Contradictions.

A day after Osama bin Laden said “Obama is planting the seeds of Muslim hatred for America” Obama spoke at Cairo University before a hand-picked audience of 3,000.. In a self-evident statement Obama said America has never been nor ever will be at war with Islam” which avoids World War I when the Ottoman Empire along side the Kaiser’s Germany against the U. S. and allies He said he had ended the use of torture and ordered Guantanamo closed within a year. Prior to travelling to the Middle East Obama peculiarly declared America a major Muslim country.  Which it is not having perhaps a 1.5% Muslim population. Pecularly Obama vehemently denied his Muslim heritage even declaring his father an atheist during last year’s election campaign. Both statements that have invited ridicule.

Following Obama’s speech White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said “the United State is no longer losing the P. R. war” seemingly acknowledging the speech was in fact a P. R. ploy at least in his mind.

Coincident to Obama’s speech Osama bin Laden issued  another audiotape saying, as the Quaran does, it  would be wrong for Muslims to befriend unbelieving infidels —  Christians and Jews. For his part Obama read passages from the Quaran, Talmud and Bible obviously avoided such inflammatory passages referred to by bin Laden.

Shaun Hannity responded on ABC’s Good Morning America by asking why Obama did not point out it was the US who liberated Muslims in Kuwaiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Somali and other Muslims as well as feeding the starving in Darfur. “It seemed like a political speech to me.”

The authoritative Middleeast new source Debkafile issued a statement saying, “Obama stressed the need for mutual respect and tolerance among the world’s faiths, denigrated al Qaeda and extremism, said the US “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” will respect all elected peaceful governments provided they respect their peoples, and called for universal human and women’s rights to be upheld. His much awaited speech to more than a billion Muslims which quoted extensively from the Koran, but also the Bible and the Talmud, won cheers from the hand selected 3,000 strong audience in Cairo University’s Great Hall Thursday, June 4.

 Along with a declaration that US bonds with Israel are unbreakable, President Obama demanded that Israel and the Palestinians uphold their obligations to the roadmap. “America will align its policies with those who seek peace - Israelis, Palestinians or Arabs,” he declared and promised to personally pursue the goal of peace and security for breaking the Israel-Palestinian stalemate. Palestinians must be allowed to live a normal life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he said, but they must abandon violence.

Rockets on sleeping children or bombs killing old people on a bus are intolerable, but the US does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements and Israel must recognize the Palestinian right to the dignity of a state of their own but so must the Arab world recognize Israel.

It should not exploit the Middle East conflict to distract their peoples from their problems. Privately, he said,, many Arabs recognize that Israel will not go away, just as many Israelis recognize the Palestinians right to a state. America will align its policies those who seek peace, Israelis, Palestinians or Arabs. “Jerusalem must be the lasting home for all faiths, all the children of Abraham.”

Obama began his speech by saying: “I have come to Cairo to seek a new beginning of mutual respect between America and Muslims: Salaam Aleikum.” America and Islam are not mutually exclusive; they share common principles.” Muslims have enriched America in many fields.

But no one should tolerate al Qaeda which killed members of all faiths, most of all Muslims, Obama stressed. America went to war to pursue al Qaeda after it ruthlessly murdered more than 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11. The United States is not fighting Islam in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but extremists who violate the Koranic injunction against killing innocents. US troops will be out of Iraq by 2012, he pledged.

 He spoke frankly about the state of democracy, human and women’s rights and education, with obvious implications for Muslim nations and governments.

 From Egypt, the US president flies to Europe for two days during which he will visit Dresden and pay his respects at the site of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. From Germany he travels to Normandy to attend D-Day anniversary ceremonies.

 Obama’s speech was translated by the White House into 12 languages and released on Twitter and the internet.