Clinton worker quits over Obama email

WASHINGTON: A volunteer co-ordinator for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has resigned after forwarding a chain email that suggests Barack Obama is a Muslim who wants to destroy the US by being elected to its highest office.
Senator Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and has never been a Muslim.

A hoax email that has been widely circulated suggests Senator Obama is some sort of stealth candidate for Muslims. Judy Rose, a Clinton co-ordinator and Democratic Party official in Jones County, Iowa, forwarded it without comment to eight people on November 21. Ms Rose referred requests for comment to one of the recipients, Grace Zimmerman, who serves with her on the Jones County Democratic Central Committee.

Ms Zimmerman today said that Ms Rose sent it to the members of the committee to “show people how dirty politics is” and did not agree with the content of the email. “Oh heavens no,” Ms Zimmerman said in a telephone interview. “She just wanted the people who were concerned with the politics of Jones County to be aware of it.” Ms Zimmerman said the Clinton campaign never talked to Ms Rose about why she sent it but simply demanded her resignation after another recipient decried the email in a post on the liberal blog Daily Kos.

“There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics,” Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle said today. “A volunteer county co-ordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain email. This was wholly unauthorised and we were totally unaware of it.” According to a release on the Clinton campaign website, Ms Rose is from Anamosa, Iowa, and served on Senator Clinton’s Women’s Leadership Council.

Senator Obama’s advisers said they accept the Clinton campaign’s word that they did not authorise the email. The email that Ms Rose forwarded points out that Senator Obama’s father and stepfather were Muslim and that Senator Obama lived in Indonesia for part of his childhood. But other parts of the email are false – Senator Obama attended public and Catholic schools in Indonesia, not a radical Islamic school. It also is not true that Senator Obama used the Koran instead of the Bible when sworn into office or that he ever “admitted” to being a Muslim.

[Source: The Australian]