SMEARED O HAS 'CROSS' WORDS
DECLARES AT RALLY: 'I PRAY TO JESUS' (NOT ALLAH)
By GEOFF EARLE, Post Correspondent
posted by linda
March 3, 2008 -- TOLEDO, Ohio - Barack Obama yesterday lashed out at political enemies who are spreading false rumors that he's a closet Muslim as he proclaimed, "I pray to Jesus every night."
"I am a devout Christian," he told voters in this key state.
"I pray to Jesus every night and try to go to church as much as I can."
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In some of his strongest comments to date, Obama, in response to a question about his religious beliefs, said he wanted to put an end to "so much confusion [that has been] deliberately perpetrated."
Obama's bid to end the rumor-mongering came just days after his campaign accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of launching a deliberate smear after the Drudge Report Web site reported that one of her staffers had forwarded photos of him wearing a turban on a 2006 trip to Africa.
In addition, numerous e-mails have circulated for months saying falsely that Obama is a Muslim.
Obama's late father, who was from Kenya, was a Christian who converted to Islam, though he was not religious. Obama himself was never a Muslim and has been a member of the same Christian church for the last 20 years.
On a recent visit to Cleveland, The Post conducted an informal survey of about a dozen people and found that most didn't know Obama's faith - and many incorrectly assumed he was a Muslim.
Some Ohio Democrats even thought he had sworn the oath of office while holding the Koran - another false Internet rumor.
Trying to reassure voters yesterday, Obama told the audience in rural Nelsonville that they would feel right at home in his church in Chicago.
Meanwhile, Clinton and Obama were battling for an edge in Ohio - which holds its primary tomorrow - as polls showed her with a lead.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer put Clinton up by 4 points, 47 to 43 percent, while the Columbus Dispatch poll gave her a 16-point lead, 56 to 40 percent.
Both campaigned in Westerville, Ohio, but missed each other by several hours.
Clinton continued to hammer Obama's experience, saying he, while eloquent in making promises, was short on results.
"For some people, this election is about how you feel, it's about speeches," Clinton told a rally of about 2,000 people. "Well, that's not what it's about for me. It's about solutions."
Clinton held rallies in Youngstown, Akron and Cleveland, and had another event on tap for today in Toledo before she flies for a nationwide town-hall meeting in Texas.
Obama hit back hard at Clinton, blasting a TV ad she released that called her the candidate better able to respond to a national crisis in the wee hours.
"What precise foreign-policy experience is she claiming that makes her qualified to answer that telephone call at 3 a.m. in the morning?" Obama said at a town-hall meeting.
"She didn't give diplomacy a chance. And to this day, she won't even admit that her vote was a mistake - or even that it was a vote for war," he said.
"When it came time to make the most important foreign-policy decision of our generation, the decision to invade Iraq, Sen. Clinton got it wrong."
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