Beware the conspiracy e-mails within

I was aware the public's faith in the Bush administration was low, but I had no idea just how deep until a reader passed along a copy of a widely distributed e-mail implying that Barack Obama is a stealth Muslim terrorist.

The e-mail - in case you haven't seen it - raises none-too-subtle questions about the Democratic nominee, a man of humble origins, and how he managed to attend expensive schools like Columbia and Harvard; travel as a student to Pakistan, India and Indonesia; and end up living in a fancy house in Chicago.

Student loans? Scholarships? A little help from friends? Hard work, perhaps?

Naaah. It was all bought and paid for with money from the Middle East. You know: A-rabs and the like.

Obama knows plenty of 'em, it appears.

Yep, there's Tony Rezko, a Syrian immigrant who parlayed pizza franchises in Chicago into a real estate empire. He was an early supporter of Obama and now awaits sentencing in an influence-peddling scandal involving the Illinois government.

But, from Rezko, the e-mail goes all bizarro, tossing in a list of foreign-born folks whose major problem appears to be they were foreign-born.

There are the college roommates from Pakistan, for instance, and the Iranian-born woman who was Michelle Obama's mentor early in her law career. (Heck, the Obamas are even friends with her. Ewww.)

"Do we see a pattern here?" the anonymous author of the e-mail says. "Or am I going crazy?"

Never mind that the Pakistani fellows ended up becoming successful U.S. businessmen and that one serves on the board of Pepsico. And never mind that the law-firm mentor happened to have been born in Iran in 1959 because her father, a doctor, was operating a clinic for poor children there.

(Uh-oh, I've attended school and worked with people who were born in Iran, India and other sketchy places - like France! Am I caught up in some sort of anti-American conspiracy, too?)

The main point we're supposed to take from this mass e-mail is - well, here, let me quote the anonymous author: "Beware of the enemy from within."

Apparently we're also supposed to believe the Bush administration - from the Department of Homeland Security, to the CIA, to the armed forces and all the way to the bunker of the fierce and irrepressible Dick Cheney - is so clueless and inept that it's allowed a stealth Muslim terrorist (that would be Obama) to inch closer and closer to becoming president of the United States.

I mean, wouldn't somebody in the administration have sent out a memo? If Obama is what this viral e-mail implies, wouldn't he be on a "no-fly list," at least?

But, alas, it appears the hapless Bush administration has overlooked similar warnings about the other fellow in the race, too - John Sidney McCain. (Yeah, as in Sid Vicious. Now there was a wholesome fellow.)

Early in the Republican primaries, tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorists circulated rumors that McCain was brainwashed by his North Vietnamese captors and that he is - ta-da - THE Manchurian Candidate.

(Uh-oh, I know people from Vietnam. Am I part of the conspiracy, too?)

I know, I know: Vietnam isn't exactly poised to take over the world.

But presumably the folks there have been waiting patiently all these years for McCain to get to the White House, so they can - I dunno - get us to borrow even more money from China and do socialist things like nationalize our banks.

Oh, right. We're creeping that way already, aren't we?

Well, as the Obama smear-mailer points out: "Beware of the enemy from within."

Daryl Lease is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

Reach him at (757) 446-2441 or daryl.lease@pilotonline.com.