OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: Corsi May Face Libel Suit Over False Claims in Anti-Obama Book

In fact, Corsi has been making the rounds of white-supremacist Internet media outlets to promote his book, including the "Political Cesspool" online radio show of the "white nationalist" group, Stormfront, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors right-wing extremist groups, and the radio show's own Web site.

The Obama campaign calls Corsi's description of Obama's multiracial family as one of many examples of Corsi's "offensive language" in the book. This blogger -- whose own family is multiracial -- calls it something else: It's racist poison, pure and simple. Only a racist would have a problem with anyone having a multiracial family.

Which goes back to the legal question, in the event of a libel suit, of whether Corsi had a malicious intent in writing The Obama Nation, especially given its obviously derogatory title. One has to wonder whether Corsi would have written so venomously of Obama's family background -- and about the senator himself -- if Obama was white.

Corsi Has Long History of Incendiary Remarks -- Even Against Bush

Corsi has a long history or making off-the-wall allegations and incendiary insults against political figures, without a shred of evidence to back him up. A staff reporter for the right-wing news site, World Net Daily, Corsi co-authored his 2004 attack on Kerry with the arch-conservative Vietnam veterans group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Corsi is not above using highly derogatory labels in his Web postings to describe people he doesn't like. He's branded former President Bill Clinton an "anti-American Communist;" Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a "bulldyke" lesbian; former Clinton aide-turned-syndicated columnist Susan Estrich as "Susan Estrogen;" "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric as "Little Katie Communist;" the late Pope John Paul II as "senile and unconcerned about sexual molestation of boys;" and all Muslims as "Satan worshippers."

Even President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been targets of Corsi's wrath, with the right-wing author accusing the Bush administration of conspiring to create a "North American Union," according to The New York Times, doing away with the United States as a sovereign nation and replacing the U.S. dollar with the amero -- a currency similar to the eruo.

The Times also reports that Corsi's anti-Obama book "appears to have distracted him from another [book] project he was planning [to release] in January: [an expose of] what he calls the government's inadequate explanations about the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center."

Interestingly, The Obama Nation was published by Threshold Books, a new Simon & Schuster imprint that is run by Mary Matalin, a top Republican strategist and media personality. Simon & Schuster is owned by CBS Corporation.

Meanwhile, the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel has been heavily promoting Corsi's book on its prime-time talk shows, including "Hannity & Colmes." The show's lead co-host, Sean Hannity, falsely claimed in an April 28 broadcast that the Illinois senator was all but endorsed by an official of the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

Army Officers Debunk Claim Obama Snubbed GIs

Meanwhile, in a related development, the New York Daily News reported that claims in a malicious e-mail that Obama snubbed American GIs in Afghanistan during his overseas tour last month were disputed by several U.S. Army officers.

The e-mail was traced to a Utah Army National Guard intelligence officer at the Bagram Airfield who claimed the Democratic presidential nominee-elect "blew off" the soldiers to play a round of basketball for a publicity photo.

But Army commanders, angered by the e-mail, hotly denied the allegation. "These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect," Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nelson-Green, the Bagram Airbase spokesman, told the newspaper.

Soldiers from Obama's home state of Illinois were invited to meet him, but his arrival was kept secret for security reasons, Nelson-Green said. "We were a bit delayed ... as he took time to shake hands, speak to troops and pose for photographs."

E-mails and telephone calls by the Daily News to the officer who made the charges and to his wife were not returned, the newspaper said.

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