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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 10/9/12

Is There A Real Connection Between Barack Obama And Barry Soetoro?

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Behind The Allegations That Obama Attended US Colleges As An Indonesia Foreign Student Because He Once Lived There Growing Up
We have all heard the allegations surrounding whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States. Then there are the accusations that he and Michelle both lost their law licenses under questionable circumstances. But, there are three questions currently being asked that Obama could immediately get closure from if he would produce the records. And depending on those records, it will show his character for what it truly is. 
First, did he attend Occidental College and Columbia University? Second, did he enroll using an adoptive name of Barry Soetoro? Third, if so, did he acquire US student grants claiming to be a foreign student from Indonesia? Obama lived and attended grade school there with his mother and step-father LoLo Soetoro? 
And a fourth questions could be, is any of this even worth discussing? 
If it sounds like a story right out of the witness protection program, it is not. The fact is, after Obama's mother divorced his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr in 1964, she married an Indonesian student and Muslim named LoLo Soetoro in Hawaii. Barack attended kindergarten from 1966 to 1967 at Noelani Elementary School in Honolulu. In 1967, Soetoro is recalled to Indonesia to work for the government, a short time afterwards, young Barack and his mother joined him in Jakarta.
Records do show that from January 1968 to December 1969, Obama's mother taught English and was an assistant director of the Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia Amerika (LIA)--the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute--which was subsidized by the U.S. government. Now, here is where the story gets interesting. According to reports, LoLo had no other children at the time he married Obama's mother. Allegedly, he adopts Barack and his parants then renamed him Barry Soetoro. He attended the first, second and third grade at the Indonesia language Santo Fransiskus Asisi Catholic School. It is claimed he is a citizen of Indonesia and his faith is Islam.
No official documents have surfaced that show Obama was indeed adopted by Soetoro. According to the 'Answer Man,' Roger Schlueter, with the News-Democrat, "There is no evidence that "Barry" Obama, as he often was called as a boy, ever took his step-dad's name, Soetoro."
In mid 1971, Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents where he attended Punahou School starting in 5th grade. No one has produced any records, (including Obama) that he ever legally changed his name back to Barack Obama or his nationality back to American. While growing up in Hawaii, Obama is introduced to a friend of his grandparents  Frank Marshall Davis, a devout communist and labor union activist. The FBI and Congress's House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) were investigating Davis. He becomes Obama's "mentor" before Reverend Charles Wright ever comes into the picture.
During this time, Obama admits to attending " socialist conferences" and studying Marxist literature. Obama stays close with Davis up until his 12th grade in high school. Some reports say Obama, using his adoptive name of Barry Soetoro, leaves Hawaii and attends Occidental College in Los Angeles where Assembly records suggests that he received a state grant as a foreign student from Indonesia in that name. Several people claim they knew him as Barack. To date, Obama has not released any of his transcripts from Occidental and was registered as a student from Indonesia. 
His college friend's at Occidental consisted of 3 Pakistanis named Wahid Hamid, Sohale Siddiqi and Mohammed Chandoo. Obama and Chandoo traveled to Pakistan together in 1981. The details of their trip have never been reported. Mohamed Hassan Chandoo later became a "bundler" for Obama while Chandoo reportedly worked for Oppenheimer & Co in New York where he raised as much as $100,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign. After two years at Occidental, Obama reportedly left LA and enrolled in Columbia University. Once again, possibly as a foreign student named Barry Soetoro. 
He has not released any transcripts, writings or records of attending Columbia. He then reportedly dropped out of Columbia and attended Harvard.

No Classmate's Recall A Barack Obama
In 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that Fox News called 400 random Columbia classmates of Obama's class of 1983 and never found one who had ever met Barack Obama. Student Obama claims he spent two years at Columbia after transferring there from Occidental College in Los Angeles. And for all the impression he made on his classmates, he might as well have never gone to a class.
Like most transfer students, Obama lived off-campus, an excuse defenders use to explain his apparent lack of human contact during his Columbia years. Obama does not speak much about his years there and or Harvard Law, other than he attended both and was elected president of the Harvard Law Review.
Ironically, Obama never contributed anything to the Harvard Law Review or any other legal publication for that matter. As Matthew Franck pointed out in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at anytime." One would think an alleged scholar would be noted somewhere.
In October 2007, the New York Times ran a piece titled "Obama's Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say." The article noted that Obama, when asked, "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Credible Source Questions Obama's Attendance
Wayne Allyn Root, is an American politician, entrepreneur, television and radio personality, political commentator and the author of "The Conscience of a Libertarian."  He was the 2008 Libertarian Party vice-presidential nominee. On August 6, 2012 he wrote an article questioning Obama's attendance at Columbia University and believes Obama may have used the name Barry Soetoro while there. Especially since he (Wayne Root) to attended Columbia also as a "Class of "83" student just like Obama claims he did.
"If anyone should have questions about Obama's record at Columbia University, it's me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of '83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I'd heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia has ever met him, saw him, or heard of him."
He goes on to state, "how did Obama pay for all these fancy schools without coming from a wealthy background? If he had student loans or scholarships, would he not have to maintain good grades? I can only think of one answer that would explain this mystery. Here's my gut belief: 
Obama got a leg up by being admitted to both Occidental and Columbia as a foreign exchange student. He was raised as a young boy in Indonesia. But did his mother ever change him back to a U.S. citizen? When he returned to live with his grandparents in Hawaii or as he neared college-age preparing to apply to schools, did he ever change his citizenship back? I'm betting not."
In Closing,
All of the speculations, rumors and conjecture could easily be solved if Obama would just release his college transcripts. There is still time before the November election.
What do you think? Is this of any importance or does it even matter?
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I am the publisher of an online news website and blog covering local, state and national news since 2007. Author of 4 cold-case murder books in the "Who Killed?" series published by Rooftop Publishing Company. Retired from mainstream media in 2007 (more...)
 
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