Peck and Wright

This is choice. Sam Stein over at Huffpo thinks he's wiggled reverend Wright off the hook on his incendiary comments about 9/11 by attributing them to Ambassador Edward Peck, who he points out is a white man (no, he didn't say typical).

Stein seems clueless that it makes not one fiddler's damn whether Peck is white or black--he's still a blame America first type of guy, very much like Wright. To wit, here he is featured on Air America's website asking for a reopening of the 9/11 investigation:

* Signatory: Petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11:
"We want truthful answers to question. … As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
o An immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
o Immediate investigation in Congressional Hearings.
o Media attention to scrutinize and investigate the evidence.
o The formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry."

Truthery delicious! Included on this list was Joe Wilson and his VIPs friends along with Ron Paul, Scott Ritter, and Dennis Kucinich. And notice the irony of demanding that New York's own Client 9 start the investigation. Maybe he was tied up at the time. Or maybe the reverend's next expose will be how the CIA exposed Spitzer's porn romp to stop him from getting the real truth..

Need more about Peck? He was formerly involved with something called the "Council for the National Interest", which appears to be a little on the anti-Israel side. He was chosen to meet with Hizballah terror leader Hassan Nasrallah after the Israeli-Lebanon war in 2006, then came back and said:

One of the things that concerns me, of course, is that I am not convinced that it’s the capture of those two soldiers, which has provoked this horrific Israeli response. I believe they were looking for an excuse, and there it was, and this is what’s happened since.

Huffpo reminds us of how Peck apologized for Saddam in the 2001 interview with Fox, essentially throwing out the "he won't work with bin Laden due to philosophical differences" line the left loves to use. Ironically in the above interview the subject of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 came up (brought up by Nasrallah), an event most believe led to the creation of Hizballah, which eventually led to many, many American deaths. Iran just honored one of the founders with a stamp.

What never gets mentioned is the role Saddam Hussein in that war. The casus belli given by Israel was the assassination attempt on their ambassador to England Shlomo Argov in London by the Abu Nidal Organization. What about Abu Nidal? Let's turn to the foreign service experts at the CFR:

Has the Abu Nidal Organization received state support?

Yes. Iraq, Syria, and Libya have all harbored the group and given it training, logistical support, and funding, often using the ANO as guns for hire. Abu Nidal began working with Iraqi intelligence while representing Fatah in Baghdad, experts say. He formed his organization with Iraq’s help and began by attacking Syria and the PLO. In 1983, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expelled Abu Nidal and his group in an attempt to win U.S. military support for Iraq’s 1980s war with neighboring Iran. Once the war ended, Iraq resumed its support of Abu Nidal.

You remember Abu Nidal, the man who committed suicide in 2002 by shooting himself in the head--several times--upon a friendly visit from Iraqi Intelligence.

Mr. Peck would have us believe Uncle Saddam was a harmless old fart incapable of working with Islamic terrorists. Unfortunately the recent assessment of the Joint Forces Command doesn't agree. But it shouldn't be surprising--Saddam had Allah Akbar pasted on his own flag. Of course he could, and did, work with Islamists if he felt he could leverage them.

And that's really the point--just because someone was in the foreign service, or even president, doesn't automatically mean they are correct. Wright was agreeing with this man's distorted opinions from the pulpit, not denying or rebuking them. That's only relevant due to his mentor relationship with Obama, otherwise only his flock would care. As to race, Stein misses the fact that it was Wright who told his audience the man's color. The rest was just conspiratorial pablum designed to inflame an America-blaming congregation. Good thing Obama didn't hear it and doesn't agree.