John Batchelor has questions for Barack Obama about Aiham Alsammarae

After a nod to a catchy opening --

A mysterious fugitive from Iraqi justice named Aiham Alsammarae, who is also a Chicago resident, is the focus of a politically fraught episode in the association between accused political fixer Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who goes on federal trial today in Chicago for graft, and Senator Barack Obama, the most spectacular Illinois presidential candidate in half a century.

John Batchelor settles down to writing what seems more an intelligence brief than a news report. The dry, precise wording makes the revelations all the more shocking.

Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for World Net Daily and the author of Schmoozing with Terrorists, contributed to the brief.

For background on the Iraq angle see the huge article at Rezko Watch, which:

...originated with information gathered by Chicago blogger Bill Baar and has been expanded and updated a number of times in order to reconcile various accounts of events.

Frankly, the echoes and correspondences in the web are getting so complicated I'm glad to see that Rezko Watch has posted a Follow the Money Rezko-Obama Muckety Map.

This brings up a valid question: whether Mr Rezko's web is so complex that detailing it risks losing the general public. Best I can answer is that when you consider that a US presidential candidate is enmeshed in the web, the mainstream media had better find a way to get across the story.

Here we come to a snag. I've been told many times that no matter much people hate negative campaigning, it works. I'd say what works even better is the atavistic Three Times Rule: If you screw around with people three times, the fourth time they won't believe you even if you're telling them God's Truth. It's the Cry Wolf reaction. Once that reaction sets in, you're up the creek if you sound a genuine alarm.

Now to apply this observation. Lies and untrue innuendo have been spread about Barack Obama. Let's start counting. There was Barack Obama's attendance at a madrassa. There was Obama's refusal to put his hand on his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance. And there is Obama's secret devotion to Islam.

So good luck when you shake people by the shoulders and yell, "Forget all that stuff! He's old fashioned political-machine slime, only he's involved with the kind of crooks who took a hatchet to Allawi in London!"

Somewhere, I hear laughter.

I wouldn't laugh too long. Barack Obama is himself approaching the Three Times limit in his presidential campaign, if he hasn't already surpassed it.

Then what might happen? It could come down to millions of Democrats having to choose between a pit of snakes and a pit of spiders -- the Democratic leadship having eased out perfectly reasonable and well-vetted candidates early on. So one scenario is the Democratic National Convention being unofficially named Howard Dean's Revenge.