"His" Committee, His Preconditions

Here’s Obama’s latest sop to the Gaffrican American community:

“Just this past week, we passed out of the out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama said at a press conference in Sderot, Israel.

Later on, the Obama campaign corrects its candidate’s words—the bill was his (partially), but he’s not on the committee. Obviously.

So if Obama is a co-sponsor to 2007 legislation implementing sanctions designed to discourage Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, didn’t he sign on to a precondition?

Basically, Obama agreed legislatively to a precondition, the concept of which he repudiated in a 2007 debate and on his website.

Diplomacy: Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.

Then, during a press conference in front of the Israelis, he crows about the success of a step toward making that precondition official US policy while claiming membership to a senate committee to which he does not belong.

Got that?

To be fair, I think that the Bush administration's latest forays into diplomacy with Iran made it easier for the senator to pull off this particular flip-flop without many observers raising a stink. But doesn't the fact that Obama has being talking no-preconditions while sleeping sanctions the whole time suggest a pattern of behavior to Obama supporters?

(Thanks to LA Times Blog)