Rock my World- 2 Class Acts!

De Niro learns new lines for Obama

Ed Pilkington in East Rutherford, New Jersey
Monday February 4, 2008
Guardian Unlimited

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigns at a rally with actor Robert De Niro in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

Celebrity endorsements of politicians do little to influence the outcome of an election, it is generally accepted. But who cares?
When Robert De Niro steps on stage, you listen.

The presence of the twice Oscar-winning actor at one of Barack Obama's last campaigning rallies before Super Tuesday underlined the scale of what Obama calls his "unlikely journey". Here was a Hollywood star lending his huge fame to someone who six months ago was barely known beyond the political cognoscenti.

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De Niro looked strangely over-awed as he stood before about 4,000 Obama supporters at the Izod Centre, the New Jersey home of the Nets basketball team. "I've never made a speech like this at a political event before," he said nervously, and for once you could be fairly certain he wasn't method acting.

He definitely hadn't bothered to learn his lines. He clutched a pad of notes which he fumblingly glanced at from time to time. "Barack Obama does not have the experience to be president of the United States," he began, evoking a pantomime "Boo!" from the crowd. "I can prove it. He wasn't experienced enough to vote to authorise the invasion of Iraq."

Nor is he, De Niro went on, experienced enough to let special interests run the government; or to make secret deals in the back rooms of power; or to leave millions of our friends and neighbours in poverty. "That's the kind of inexperience I could get used to."

The celebrity theme continued with the now regular appearance of Obama's Kennedy endorsers. Caroline Kennedy remained silent, letting her smile do the talking. Teddy Kennedy, by contrast, drove himself hoarse, his fist shaking in the air and his thick mop of white hair flashing like a beacon.

"The next 24 hours is perhaps one of the most important moments in your life," he said with such passion that you wondered whether he was reliving his own long-gone presidential ambitions.

When Obama finally took charge of the microphone he did to the Izod throng what over the past year he has done to crowds from coast to coast, from north to south across America: he made them feel important.

The hunger for change was theirs, he told them. The call for justice after the abuses of the Bush years - from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, the ending of habeus corpus and the use of torture - was their call. The energy to reunite the nation flowed from them.

"After a year criss-crossing the country, after engaging the American people in conversation, my bet has paid off," he said. "The American people are ready to write a new chapter of the American story."

The response was ecstatic. He may be surrounded these days by Oscar-winning actors and the American equivalent of political royalty.

But when Barack Obama steps on stage, nothing else matters to his followers.

Diary of an Insurgent In Retreat

Al-Qaeda in Iraq Figure Lists Woes

By Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 10, 2008; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Feb. 9 -- On Nov. 3, U.S. soldiers raided a safe house of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq near the northern city of Balad. Not a single combatant was captured, but inside the house they found something valuable: a diary and will written in neat Arabic script.

"I am Abu Tariq, Emir of al-Layin and al-Mashadah Sector," it began.

Over 16 pages, the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader detailed the organization's demise in his sector. He once had 600 men, but now his force was down to 20 or fewer, he wrote. They had lost weapons and allies. Abu Tariq focused his anger in particular on the Sunni fighters and tribesmen who have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and joined the U.S.-backed Sunni Sahwa, or "Awakening," forces.

"We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers," Abu Tariq wrote. "We must not have mercy on those traitors until they come back to the right side or get eliminated completely in order to achieve victory at the end."

The diary is the U.S. military's latest weapon in a concerted information campaign to undermine al-Qaeda in Iraq and its efforts to regroup and shift tactics. The movement remains strong in northern areas, and many American commanders consider it the country's most immediate security threat. In recent days, U.S. officials have released seized videos showing the Sunni insurgent group training children to kidnap and kill, as well as excerpts of a 49-page letter allegedly written by another al-Qaeda leader that describes the organization as weak and beset by low morale.

"It is important we get our story out," a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity. "I firmly believe the information part of this conflict is as very vital as the armed element of it. . . . We don't want to lose that to al-Qaeda."

A scanned copy of the diary with names redacted with black ink was provided to The Washington Post on Saturday. Its contents provide a rare glimpse into the thoughts of an embattled al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, as well as a snapshot of an insurgent movement that is in turmoil in some parts of Iraq. It also reflects a growing conflict among Sunnis. Since October, attacks by al-Qaeda in Iraq against the Awakening fighters have doubled, said Maj. Winfield S. Danielson III, a U.S. military spokesman.

U.S. military officials said they are convinced the diary is authentic. Most, if not all of it, was written in October, and its tone of anger and bitterness is consistent with security improvements they were seeing in Balad at the time, they said. An estimated 450 Sunni Awakening fighters, also known to the U.S. military as "concerned local citizens," are now providing security in the area. The Post could not independently verify the diary's authenticity.

The U.S. military officials cautioned that the diary was not a portrait of the insurgency across the country. "This is the state of al-Qaeda in this area," the U.S. military official said.

Not much is known about Abu Tariq. U.S. military officials said that they had no one in custody by that name and that it was most likely a pseudonym. Mansour Abed Salem, a tribal leader whose brother leads the Awakening forces in some areas north of Baghdad, described Abu Tariq as the "legal religious emir" of an area stretching from Taji, north of the capital, to south of Balad.

Awakening forces and al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters clashed in that area recently, Salem said. The Awakening forces found 20 decrees signed by Abu Tariq that sentenced to death prisoners his men had captured, including policemen and soldiers. Salem said Abu Tariq had recently fled to Mosul, an al-Qaeda in Iraq stronghold, where U.S. and Iraqi troops are preparing a major offensive.

Throughout the diary, Abu Tariq appears to have been speaking and giving instructions to his followers. He was also keeping a record of sorts, as if anticipating his death.

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Related

Translation: Diary of an Insurgent (PDF)

Arabic Excerpt: Diary of an Insurgent (PDF)