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pmmsnyahoogtalk | 5-16-08 (19th May 08 at 6:29pm UTC)
News |   | Obama Fires Back at Bush, McCain
By Matthew Mosk
WATERTOWN, S.D. -- Sen. Barack Obama suggested to several hundred residents of this farming town of 20,000 that he welcomed the idea of turning the presidential contest into a debate on who is better fit to guide the nation's foreign policy.
Pausing before a town hall meeting in a livestock arena, Obama said he wanted to address what he called his "dust-up over foreign policy" with President Bush and Sen. John McCain.
"If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting America, that is a debate I will have any time, any place," he said to a cheering crowd. "George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for."
Obama then launched into list of grievances, including a war fought on the premise of uprooting weapons of mass destruction that were never found, the failure to catch Osama Bin Laden and turning Iran into the "greatest beneficiary" of the Iraq war.
"That's the Bush-McCain record on protecting this country," Obama said. "Those are the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down on."
The senator's comments came in response to President Bush's speech before the Israeli Knesset yesterday, in which he likened a willingness to meet with "terrorists and radicals" to appeasement of the Nazis.
"That's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and alienates us from the world," Obama said. "And that's exactly why we need change."
In his speech, Bush warned that the United States must not negotiate with Iran or radical groups such as Hamas.
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush told the Israeli lawmakers. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Obama called the comments "dishonest, divisive attacks."
"John McCain has repeated this notion that I'm prepared to negotiate with terrorists. I have never said that," Obama said. "I am not prepared to negotiate with Hamas."
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By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, speaking a day after a California court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage, firmly restated on Friday the Roman Catholic Church's position that only unions between a man and a woman are moral.
Benedict made no mention of the California decision in his speech to family groups from throughout Europe, but stressed the Church's position several times.
"The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that can not be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions," he said.
The pope also spoke of the inalienable rights of the traditional family, "founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, to be the natural cradle of human life".
On Thursday, the California Supreme Court overturned a ban on same-sex marriages in a major victory for gay rights advocates that will allow homosexual couples to marry in the most populous U.S. state.
Last year, Italy's powerful Catholic Church successfully campaigned against a law proposed by the previous centre-left government that would have given more rights to gay and unmarried couples.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is not sinful but homosexual acts are, and is opposed to gays being allowed to adopt children.
The California court found laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples are at odds with rights guaranteed by the state's constitution.
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By Lin Noueihed
DUBAI (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden vowed in an audio tape to mark Israel's 60th anniversary to continue to fight the Jewish state and its allies in the West.
The al Qaeda leader, who has placed growing emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said it was at the heart of the Muslim battle with the West and an inspiration to the 19 bombers who carried out the attacks on U.S. cities on September 11, 2001.
"We will continue, God permitting, the fight against the Israelis and their allies ... and will not give up a single inch of Palestine as long as there is one true Muslim on Earth," he said in the message, posted on an Islamist website on Friday.
Bin Laden said Israel's anniversary celebrations were a reminder that it did not exist 60 years ago, and had been established on land seized from Palestinians by force.
"This is evidence that Palestine is our land, and the Israelis are invaders and occupiers who should be fought," he said in the tape, which was addressed to the Western public.
The Saudi-born militant also said that decades of peace initiatives had failed to establish a Palestinian state, and the West had proved time and again that it sided with Israel.
"The participation of Western leaders with the Jews in this celebration confirms that the West backs this Jewish occupation of our land, and that they stand in the Israeli corner against us," he said. "They proved this in practice by sending their forces to southern Lebanon."
He also said Western media had over the years painted Israelis as victims, and the Palestinians who had been displaced from their land as terrorists.
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