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President Claims Shooting as a Hobby, and the White House Offers Proof - New York Times

Posted: 02 Feb 2013 09:09 AM PST

By PETER BAKER and MARK LANDLER

Published: February 2, 2013

WASHINGTON — When President Obama mentioned last week that he had picked up a new hobby — skeet shooting at Camp David — it was a surprising disclosure by a president whose main identification with guns these days is his effort to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.

To some, Mr. Obama's newfound enthusiasm for shooting clay pigeons — he said in an interview that he did it "all the time" at his retreat in the Maryland mountains — also seemed a bit suspicious.

So on Saturday, the White House tried to silence the skeptics by releasing a photo of Mr. Obama shooting on the range at Camp David in August. In the photo, the president, wearing protective glasses and ear-muffs, is squinting down the barrel of a gun, moments after pulling the trigger. Smoke shoots out of the front of the gun.

The White House said the photo was taken on Aug. 4, which was Mr. Obama's 51st birthday. But it offered no further details on whether his target practice was a regular hobby or a one-time event.

The notion of the president taking aim at targets flung into the air captivated some in the political and social media worlds at a time when he is pushing Congress to enact sweeping restrictions on high-capacity rifles and magazines. Conservatives scoffed, comics mocked, a congresswoman challenged him to a skeet-shooting contest, a fake picture of an armed Mr. Obama circulated on the Internet, and the White House tried to make the whole matter go away.

"It was a surprise to a lot of people in the industry when we saw that and heard that," said Michael Hampton Jr., the executive director of the National Skeet Shooting Association, whose 35,000-member rolls do not include the president.

Mr. Obama is hardly the first politician to draw scorn for boasting of experience with guns. In 2007, during his first presidential campaign, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts was ridiculed when he said, "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter — small varmints, if you will." In 2004, John Kerry, then a presidential candidate and now secretary of state, was lampooned for showing up in camouflage to go hunting less than two weeks before the election.

The latest commotion has its origins in the interview Mr. Obama gave to The New Republic, now owned by Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder and former Obama campaign aide. During the interview, Franklin Foer, the magazine's editor, referred to the fight over gun control and asked the president if he had ever fired a gun.

"Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," Mr. Obama said.

"The whole family?" Mr. Foer asked.

"Not the girls," he said, "but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake."

Mr. Obama went on to say that the reality of guns in urban areas differs from that in rural areas. "So it's trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months," he said. "And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes."

The skeet-shooting comment caught many off guard because it is not something the president has talked about. While other presidents have used the skeet shooting range at Camp David, database searches of Mr. Obama's speeches and interviews turned up no prior mention of participating. No friend or guest has come forward in recent days to publicly describe shooting with the president.

"I would refer you simply to his comments," Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, told reporters who asked after the interview was published how often the president shoots. "I don't know how often. He does go to Camp David with some regularity, but I'm not sure how often he's done that."

Asked why no one had seen a picture or heard about it before, Mr. Carney said, "Because when he goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and friends and relax, not to produce photographs."

That did not satisfy the skeptics. The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column cast doubt on the claim, while Fox News quoted an unnamed person saying Mr. Obama had participated once during a Marine competition at Camp David but not "all the time." Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, went on CNN to question the assertion.

"I tell you what I do think," Ms. Blackburn said. "I think he should invite me to Camp David, and I'll go skeet shooting with him and I bet I'll beat him."

Gun rights supporters said the president was evidently trying to reach out to gun owners to assuage their concerns about his legislative proposals.

"He clearly doesn't get it," said Chris Cox, the chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. "But in his effort to pursue a political agenda, he apparently is willing to convince gun owners that he's one of us, that he's a Second Amendment supporter."

Mr. Cox said no one was fooled. "Skeet shooting, whether you've done it or not, doesn't make you a defender of the Second Amendment," he said.

While White House officials privately dismissed skeptics by comparing them to "truthers" who doubted that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, even some liberals found the skeet-shooting comment hard to believe.

Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" made fun of Mr. Obama's statement as well as those who doubted it. He essentially agreed with Mr. Cox that it was pointless for the president to try to reach out to gun rights supporters who do not believe him.

"The point is, Mr. President, what are you doing? Why try?" Mr. Stewart asked. "As far as most of your opponents go, no measure of detente, true or disingenuous, will ingratiate you to your opponents. It's a fool's errand."

Marxist Group Claims Attack on US Embassy in Turkey - New York Times

Posted: 02 Feb 2013 09:18 AM PST

By TIM ARANGO

Published: February 2, 2013

ISTANBUL — In a statement that called the United States "the murderer of the peoples of the world," a Marxist group, with a history of political violence in Turkey, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at the American Embassy in Ankara.

The statement, which also denounced American foreign policy, was reportedly released by the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party, and a translation was distributed by the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors the communications of extremist groups. The message, which was released on a Web site that has previously carried statements from the group, condemned Turkey's policy of supporting Syria's rebels against the government of Bashar al-Assad.

The statement included details that were similar to those released so far by the Turkish authorities, although the group's message had a different first name for the bomber than the one given by Turkish officials and reported in the local news media.

The Turkish authorities said Saturday that the man who detonated himself at the American Embassy in Ankara on Friday, killing himself and one other, was a convicted terrorist who had twice attacked government facilities in Istanbul but was released from prison in 2002 under an amnesty program.

Officials in Ankara said Saturday they were awaiting the results of a DNA test before releasing the bomber's name, but officials in the Black Sea coastal town of Ordu identified him as Ecevit Sanli, 40, and said he was a registered citizen of their town. Authorities in Ordu said the bomber was identified by relatives through photographs.

The statement by the militant group included two photographs of the bomber (in one, he is holding an assault rifle, and a banner bearing the hammer-and-sickle communist symbol is behind him) that appeared to be the same person seen in photographs published by the news media. The group identified the bomber with the first name "Alisan."

The attack, coming in the wake of the assault on an American diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, by Islamic extremists, raised fears that it was the work of jihadists. That the bomber appears to have ties to a relatively minor Marxist group, which was responsible for political violence in the 1970s, is likely to challenge assumptions about the nature of international terrorism and the risks to American interests abroad. American officials, however, have not confirmed the identity of the attacker, nor a motive, and the United States plans to conduct an investigation.

The statement from officials in Ordu said on Saturday that Mr. Sanli spent five years in prison after being arrested in 1997 for attacking a military hostel and police station in Istanbul. He was then released in 2002 under an amnesty program for inmates with medical conditions, the statement said.

The authorities said Mr. Sanli lobbed a hand grenade during Friday's attack just before detonating himself, suggesting there were actually two explosions.

As the investigation continues, the authorities are trying to determine whether Mr. Sanli had any collaborators. The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Mr. Sanli had fled to Germany after being released from prison, and had returned to Turkey only a few days before the attack.

The group has struck American and western targets in Turkey before, including during the gulf war in the early 1990s, and in its statement Saturday, the group condemned the recent deployment by NATO of Patriot missile batteries in southern Turkey.

In a report published several days before the bombing, Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, warned that Turkey's support of Syrian rebels in their fight against the government of Mr. al-Assad, as well as the deployment by NATO of Patriot missile batteries, was rallying Turkey's extreme left.

"The country's political landscape still bears vestiges of violent leftist movements from the 1970s, as well as deeply anti-American ultranationalism," he wrote. Mr. Cagaptay noted that some militant left-wing groups organized protests against the Patriot missile deployment in the southern port city of Iskenderun, where protesters have fired smoke grenades at NATO troops and burned American flags.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Sabtu, 2 Februari 2013