Obama Faked 2002 Anti-War Speech for Ad!

American Thinker has two posts up this morning that are pretty astounding, the first by Ed Lasky (Obama's phony speech recording) and the second by Rick Moran (Obama faked 2002 Anti-War Speech for Ad: New Book).

Both report on an ad used by Barack Obama to firmly establish his anti-war creds during the Democratic primary. The account of the making of the ad is reported in Jerome Corsi's new book, The Obama Nation. As Corsi informs us, there was a problem with the speech, which Obama claims provides irrefutable evidence that he was always against the Iraq War. There's no copies of it anywhere, so the Obama campaign composed an ad during the primary that recreated the speech, complete with fake applause and crowd noise, in a studio.

Now I've always taken at face value Barack Obama's claim that he was always against the Iraq War. It fits with his persona and politics - he'd be against the War on Terror as well if the public was not so firmly behind it. But I did a little more digging, and can't find a copy of the full speech transcript as given anywhere.

That's important because Obama claims that he took the anti-Iraq War position, and made that speech declaring so, at great political risk to himself. As the liberal NPR noted when this subject first came up within Democratic Party circles this past March (and was subsequently buried), he gave that particular speech in September of 2002, when he was an unknown outside of Chicago and four months prior to announcing his race for the Senate. And his race, against Alan Keyes, was a cakewalk that had nothing to do with Obama's anti-Iraq War position.

Furthermore, as the NPR article shows, the journalist covering the event didn't think that Obama and his 'famous' speech was even worth mentioning in his article on the event:

"I'm the guy who didn't quote Barack Obama," says Bill Glauber.

As a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Glauber covered the October 2002 anti-war rally in Chicago where Illinois Sen. Barack Obama delivered his now-famous speech opposing the use of force in Iraq.

In his resulting article, Glauber did not even mention Obama, who was a state senator at the time. Instead, Glauber focused on the day's featured speaker, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the size of the crowd — about 1,000.

Bill Glauber then turns around and quickly covers himself:

But even then, Glauber says, Obama "had something."

"It was the ability to communicate to a crowd," Glauber says.

Glauber, who now writes for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, marvels at Obama's meteoric rise.

"It really probably started at that rally," he says.

"Now, he's running for president, and I'm in Milwaukee."

I'm also quite disturbed that Obama went so far out of his way to "recreate" his speech for a campaign ad. Does anyone, aside from political groupies, know that the speech was faked for the ad?

As there is no evidence anywhere that Obama once supported the Iraq War, it seems that faking the speech in 2008 is another needlessly reckless move on the candidate's part. He already had the anti-war creds that he needed during the primary. Why risk it? And why lie about the speech being risky for his then nonexistant Senate campaign?

I hope that a transcript of the full speech does turn up. NPR alludes that the entire speech was anti-Iraq War, but obviously from the coverage the focus was on Jesse Jackson. I wonder why?

And again I'll note that if a Republican candidate did this on any issue, it would have been all over the drive-by media, and it would have sunk his or her campaign. Instead, the media buried it. Sigh...