Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah spends his July 8 WorldNetDaily column bashing President Obama for a 1983 newspaper article he wrote as a Columbia undergraduate that advocated a reduction in nuclear arms -- which, of course, Farah dismissed as a "screed ... hat denounced U.S. defense policies." Farah falsely asserted that in the article, Obama "preferred to see deep unilateral disarmament by the U.S."; in fact, the article says nothing about unilateral disarmament.
Farah then repeated claims Obama made in a campaign ad that purportedly "affirmed those ideas" fromthe 1983 article. One of those claims was "I will slow our development of future combat systems," to which Farah responds, "This illustrates the man sitting in the White House today believes America should disarm unilaterally."
Farah has no idea what he is talking about. Obama was not referring to slowing development of all "future combat systems." In fact, Future Combat Systems is a specific Pentagon program launched in 2003 with the goal of modernizing Army weapons systems. It has long been troubled by cost overruns and dubious effectiveness of the planned weapons.
Even Obama's 2008 opponent, John McCain, agreed with Obama, asserting that the FCS program "should be ended" (later amended to "slowed").
Farah's problem appears to be that he's getting his information from his own website. Indeed, all the references to Obama's statement about Future Combat Systems in WND's archive treat the term as an all-encompassing generic reference and not the name of a specific military program. Needless to say, since WND writers are utterly clueless about the nature of the program, there's no mention of its troubled history.
So, what Farah was intending as a quick, cheap shot against Obama only exposes Farah's own ignorance.
