Following his announcement yesterday that he will be supporting Wall Street's push to expand NAFTA into Peru, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has embarked on a campaign of misdirection - ironically (or perhaps, predictably) similar to the original campaign of deception that marked the original debate over NAFTA.
Here is just one example of the deception. It would be a conspiracy if the facts debunking his rhetoric wasn't so out in the open and public for all to see.
CLAIM:
"The Peruvian agreement contains the very labor agreements that labor and our allies have been asking for." - Barack Obama, 10/10/07
FACT:
Not a single American labor union has endorsed the Peru trade pact, which extends NAFTA into Peru. While the AFL-CIO has said that some language in the deal is better than old trade pacts, the AFL-CIO is nonetheless against the deal because it extends the overall NAFTA model. The Hill newspaper just a few weeks ago once again confirmed that "The AFL-CIO is not supporting [the Peru] deal." In fact, almost every single labor, human rights, religious, environmental, anti-poverty and consumer advocacy organization has come out against the Peru pact - and that includes those organizations both in the United States and in Peru. For more on that opposition and on how this Peru deal is a 99% mirror of NAFTA, see here, here, here and here. Additionally, please recall that the Chamber of Commerce has already confirmed it has been given confirmation by the Bush administration that the watered down labor language in this NAFTA expansion is unenforceable.
P.S. To the Obama partisans who refuse to acknowledge these basic facts out of a blind sense of Partisan War Syndrome, go ahead -- fill up the comments with your excuses, your misdirections, your justifications and your absurdly dishonest claims that I am working for another candidate, or that I am a "supporter" of another candidate (the horror! the horror!). I'm not picking on Obama -- rest assured I'll have more to say on all candidates as we learn more about where they stand on the NAFTA expansion. Go ahead - waste the bandwith to make yourselves feel better, call me a liar even with all the facts, hyperlinks and data lined up against you. But huff and puff all you want -- these are the facts, and these are the reasons why the rank-and-file Democrats in Congress like Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Phil Hare (from Obama's own state) are working hard to defeat this NAFTA expansion.