Excerpt:
Barack Obama delivered the message loud and clear and his target audience surely understood it, as the president no doubt intended. No amount of half-hearted clarifications after the fact could distort the meaning of what the president in effect told Muslims during last Friday's state dinner: 'I've got your back.' The plan to construct the thirteen story Park 51 Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan is a lightening rod among Americans of all political persuasions and it is thus unthinkable that the president could "misspeak" when he decided to weigh in on this polarizing issue.
There was nothing wrong with the first part of Obama's statement: "As a citizen and as President, I believe that Muslims have the right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country." You would have to search far and wide to find Americans who would disagree with that sentiment. However, when one combines that sentence with what immediately followed, the sum of the president's message was both a gross distortion of the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero mosque and a wink and nod to Muslims everywhere: "That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan."