WorldNetDaily's Zombie Lies

If there's one thing WorldNetDaily knows how to do, it's tell lies, especially about Barack Obama. ConWebWatch has documented numerous examples.

But WND insists on repeating some lies long after they've been exposed as such. Why? Likely because such lies further its insanely hostile anti-Obama agenda. It's easier for Joseph Farah and Co. to peddle the lie than it is to report the truth.

Here are just a few examples of the zombie lies roaming the earth at WND.

"Civilian national security force"

Back in 2008, ConWebWatch busted one of the earliest lies WorldNetDaily told about Barack Obama: that Obama's reference to a "civilian national security force" was a call to create a police-state apparatus. In fact, Obama was referring to an expansion of the foreign service.

More than three years later, WND is still spreading that lie, or feigning ignorance by pretending it doesn't know what Obama meant.

An Oct. 27 WND article announcing the latest edition of its Whistleblower magazine began this way:

While running for the presidency, Barack Obama made a mysterious and bizarre campaign promise.

He said that as president he would create "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the U.S. military, to advance his "objectives" for America.

The astonishing announcement, made July 2, 2008, to an audience in Colorado Springs, was ignored by virtually the entire media – except WND. Nobody bothered to ask Obama specifically what he meant, or how he could possibly assemble and fund such a massive civilian army, or why – and he never spoke of it again.

WND furthered the lie by claiming that the "civilian army" is a reference to unions, followed by another blatant lie, this time from WND managing editor David Kupelian:

In fact, from Day One the Obama administration has been generously "funding" the union army. From the General Motors bailout, which blatantly favored union workers, to Obamacare, whose burdensome new regulations don't apply to many unions thanks to special White House waivers exempting them; from Obama's early executive order requiring all federal agencies to accept construction bids only from contractors who agree to use union workers, to packing the D.C. bureaucracy with union officials – the Obama regime has been characterized by non-stop union payoffs, special treatment, insider access and blatant power grabs. All in return for their undying loyalty and service in "OBAMA'S ARMY."

[...]

"Every army has its generals, its politicians, its propagandists and its behind-the-scenes chess-masters," said WND Managing Editor David Kupelian. "But in Obama's army, who are the ground troops? This issue of Whistleblower dramatically and definitively answers that question."

WND editor Joseph Farah kept up the bogus scaremongering his Dec. 22 column, kicking things off with a blatant falsehood:

Way back in July 2008, when Barack Obama was just a candidate for the presidency, he gave a speech in which he called for the creation of a "civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the U.S. military.

No one in the media reported it.

The line was chopped from transcriptions of the speech handed out to the media and public.

The Obama campaign stonewalled WND's efforts to question what he meant.

Finally, I broke the story in this column.

Farah boosted the scaremongering by claiming that "Obama may have pushed his 'civilian national security force' through the Congress and signed it into law" through a defense reauthorization bill, adding, "I mean, who needs a 'civilian national security force' if Obama can simply rewrite the rules of engagement for the U.S. military and employ those forces to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial?"

A Dec. 29 WND article by Joseph Arminio served up a variation on the falsehood. Amid uncritically repeats the ravings of right-wing congressman Louis Gohmert, Arminio referenced a portion of the health care reform law "that references a new national security force, what some have called Obama's 'private army.'"

In fact, the health care reform law did not create a “private army” for Obama. It establishes a “ready reserve corps” of medical personnel inside the Public Health Service to respond to medical emergencies. The corps would be an adjunct of the Commissioned Corps, which has been around for more than 200 years. FactCheck.org and Media Matters shot down this conspiracy theory nearly two years ago, yet WND insists on pretending it's real.

Farah gave the zombie lie another tired go-round in his Jan. 8 column, falsely asserting that "the media compliantly declined to pursue an explanation of Obama’s call for the creation of a 'civilian national security force.'" That's because the media didn't need to since Obama already did.

Obama and Odinga

Back in 2008, WND's Jerome Corsi made an ill-fated trip to Kenya, from which he retrieved documents purporting to demonstrate Obama's involvement in Kenyan politics -- all of which proved to be fraudulent. (Corsi has never corrected the record regarding those documents, by the way.) Around the same time, Corsi claimed in his 2008 Obama-bashing book that during a 2006 visit to Africa, Obama "openly supported" Raila Odinga, who at the time was campaigning for president in Kenya. Corsi argued that this was because Obama wanted to avenge his father's tribe, the Luo, against rival tribes.

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But has PolitiFact documented, remained neutral in Kenyan politics and did not support Odinga during his trip. While Odinga attended some of Obama's events while Obama was in Kenya and clearly wanted to associate himself with Obama, there's no evidence that Obama "openly supported" Odinga.

Despite the fact that the claim is a lie, WND has continued to repeat it. A July 2010 article touted the false claim as repeated in a book by anti-Muslim activist Andrew McCarthy. As evidence, McCarthy cited a 2008 Washington Times column by Mark Hyman, which offered no evidence to back up the claim. As noted by Media Matters, McCarthy did not note that a few days later, the Washington Times published a letter to the editor responding to Hyman's column by J. Scott Gration, a retired Air Force major general who accompanied Obama on his trip. Gration said that "I can say unequivocally that Mr. Hyman's piece was filled with lies and innuendo," adding: "Mr. Obama did not "campaign" on behalf of Raila Odinga, has never endorsed him, and was not 'nearly inseparable' from Mr. Odinga during his time in Kenya. Mr. Obama met with a wide range of Kenyan and American officials, including a Nobel Prize winner, human-rights defenders, and President Mwai Kibaki. He did not have a single scheduled meeting with Mr. Odinga."

Nevertheless, Corsi repeated the lie again in a Dec. 19 article:

WND reported the existence of a strategy document developed by Obama and Odinga during Obama's 2006 senatorial "fact-finding" trip to Kenya. It called for Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement, or ODM, to exploit tribal tensions should Odinga lose the 2007 presidential challenge, as a means of keeping alive his aspiration to be Kenyan head of state.

During the 2006 trip, Obama campaigned so openly for Odinga that Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua went on Kenyan television on behalf of Kenyan President Kibaki to object that Obama was meddling inappropriately in Kenyan politics, as WND reported.

Corsi's lies infected other WND reporters. Michael Carl channeled Corsi in another Dec. 19 article making the false claim that "Obama traveled to Kenya to campaign for Odinga."

It happened again in a Jan. 4 article promoting WND editor Joseph Farah’s “premium online newsletter” G2 Bulletin, falsely claiming that Obama "barnstormed on behalf of Raila Odinga."

WND articles on Feb. 22 and Feb. 28 repeated identical boilerplate falsehoods.

Obama, the Warren Court and the Constitution

ConWebWatch documented in 2008 how WND joined the rest of the ConWeb in misinterpreting statements Obama made in a 2001 radio interview, including that that the Supreme Court under Earl Warren "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution." In fact, Obama was pointing out that because the Warren court did not get into "the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society," it was not as radical as some right-wingers have portrayed it -- not, as WND and others have portrayed it, as a demand that the Supreme Court force those views.

Pat Boone asserted in an October 2010 column that Obama said, "The Constitution is a flawed document." There is no quote of Obama saying those exact words; what Obama did say in that same radio interview is that while it "reflected the fundamental flaw of this country" in allowing slavery, the Constitution is also "a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now." Boone omitted that last part.

Still, WND has continued to insist on taking Obama's words out of context to twist their meaning and, thus, lie about what he actually said:

• In an April 2, 2011, column, Henry Lamb wrote of Obama: "He considers the Constitution to be a 'flawed' document he alone has the wisdom to correct."
• In a May 28, 2011, column, Ellis Washington misinterpreted Obama's statements as a "socialist judicial philosophy" rather than what it actually is: an explanation that the Warren Court wasn't as radical as right-wingers like Washington like to believe it is.
• A Sept. 9 article claimed that "WND also reported Obama believes the Constitution is flawed, because it fails to address wealth redistribution, and he says the Supreme Court should have intervened years ago to accomplish that." Obama said no such thing.