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Bob Kerrey: Barack Obama ˜Spent A Little Bit Of Time In A Secular Madrassa

This evening on CNN’s The Situation Room, former Sen. Bob Kerrey asserted that Barack Obama had spent time “in a secular madrassa” and argued this was a “tremendous strength” for Obama:

I’ve watched the blogs try to say that you can’t trust him because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa. I feel quite the opposite — I think it’s a tremendous strength. Whether he’s in the United States Senate or whether he’s in the White House, I think it’s a tremendous asset for him.

Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/12/kerreymad.320.240.flv]

Note to Kerrey: Barack Obama never attended a “secular madrassa” — an inherently contradictory term because a madrassa is, by definition, a religiously-based school. The claim that Obama attended a madrassa didn’t come from blogs, but rather from right-wing outlets. Insight Magazine, a right-wing magazine tied to the Washington Times, first reported in January that Obama attended an Islamic madrassa school as a 6-year-old child. Fox News then amplified the smear.

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CNN, the network on which Kerrey appeared today, debunked the Obama smear in January. CNN’s Senior International Correspondent John Vause traveled to Indonesia, visited the school that Obama attended, and reported it was a public school that did not focus on religion.

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