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    Obama & NAFTA-Gate - Republican "Dirty Tricks"

    By quinn esq on Wed, 05/28/2008 - 2:27pm |
    The leak of the NAFTA-Gate memo alleging that Barack Obama was merely "playing politics" by questioning NAFTA, is now being tied back to the son of Wisconsin Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner - the man who introduced the Patriot Act.

    Investigations by James Travers and Tim Harper of The Toronto Star have fingered U.S. Republican sources working within the Canadian embassy as having leaked the document, which was portrayed as showing Senator Obama's questioning of NAFTA was insincere.

    "This was a very deliberate piece of business for political purposes," one source says. Questions were raised from the point when the memo was first (verbally) leaked, as it appeared to initially suggest the conversations had involved Senator Clinton's campaign. After some time, Conservative government sources attributed the statements instead to the Obama campaign.

    The Star's investigations appear to have raised the stakes beyond the identity of the particular Democratic campaign involved, by naming particular U.S. Republicans as potentially having been involved in the process of leaking the memo to the AP.

    Frank Sensenbrenner (27) - a former Republican fund-raiser and the man identified as the "conduit" in the affair - has since stated he is "dismayed" at the allegations, that he categorically denies them and that he had "never seen the memo in question."

    Sensenbrenner was working in the Canadian embassy to the U.S. at the time, but against the wishes of many of the diplomats there, including the Canadian Ambassador himself. 

    The Star states that "The diplomatic corps on Pennsylvania Ave. didn't want him there and ultimately were so distrustful of the son of a right-wing Republican congressman, they muttered that they wanted his door left open so they could hear who he was talking to."

    The hard-right Canadian Conservative government appears to have forced his placement in the Embassy, against these wishes. Sensenbrenner was brought to Canadian Embassy staff by Gerry Chipeur, a lawyer "who headed the Republicans Abroad Canada," and who "has deep ties to the evangelical movement" as well as to Kansas Senator Sam Brownbeck.

    Prime Minister Stephen Harper has long been an admirer of the Republicans, and has an inner circle of advisors and friends which draws heavily from them. Harper's political base is Alberta, the continent's largest supply of new oil, where he had worked for a Republican-style "think tank," often advocating a loosening of Canadian Confederation, in favor of closer ties to the U.S. A controversial gain for the U.S. in the earlier Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement - also negotiated by a Conservative - was unfettered access to Canadian energy supplies.  

    As PM, Harper has only been able to gain a minority government status, largely as a result of polls showing a high level of distrust amongst Canadians for his strong ties to the U.S. Right. While earlier criticisms of Harper focussed on his positions - Pro-Iraq War, anti-action on Global Warming, and criticisms of Canada's Universal Health Care, his recent time in power has produced a series of scandals and raised issues of corruption. Critics have pointed to financial inducements offered by the Conservatives to a (dying) independent MP (to obtain his vote and sustain the government in power), the use of libel charges to dampen questioning in Parliament, and the dismissal of the heads of numerous independent investigation and watchdog bodies.

    The political risks for the Conservatives in being seen to be not just ideologically allied to the Republicans, but potentially involved in "dirty tricks" activities, are borne out by recent Canadian opinion polls, which show 56% of Canadians preferring Senator Obama, as against 15% for Senator McCain.

    http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/432095

    http://www.thestar.com/article/431367

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