This is the speech that enabled his handlers to position him to the viable left flank of naifs like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, “who took the president at his word” and voted for the War in Iraq.

Although effective, this speech was factually adrift in any number of key details and sneakily anti-Semitic. In Obama’s defense, he probably did not sense the anti-Semitic riff because he likely did not write the speech

The long slow march through the institutions had to be subtle.

Obama offered the caution that he was “not opposed to war in all circumstances,” a point that he was at pains to reinforce.

Obama promptly cited the American Civil War as a war he could support. That the war led to a bloody, twelve-year insurgency and occupation, which ended only when the U.S. military yielded to the insurgents, was likely something Obama did not know.

Obama also gave his belated approval to World War II and sang the praises of his grandfather, who fought in Patton’s army