When you're giving a public speech -- especially when you're a politician preparing to run for national
office -- the venue matters as much as the message. Who's sponsoring the event? Who else is speaking?
By sharing the platform, might you be construed to be supporting someone you'd rather not?

Lost in all the second-guessing over how and why Barack Obama came to give his October 2002 speech
against the impending war in Iraq is this:

Who organized the rally?

Turns out it was organized by International A.N.S.W.E.R., now known as the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.
Founded a couple of days after 9/11, A.N.S.W.E.R. -- which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End
Racism -- was the dominant anti-war coalition in this country until late 2002.

On the day of Obama's now-famous speech, A.N.S.W.E.R. organized the first national demonstrations
against a war with Iraq, with major rallies and marches in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, as well
as smaller events elsewhere around the country -- including the Chicago rally where Obama spoke.

What most people who turned out for these events did not know, unless they were veteran activists of the
radical left, is that A.N.S.W.E.R. was founded by -- and maintains deep ties to -- two Marxist-Leninist political
parties: the World Workers Party and, after a split in the WWP in 2004, the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Surely, this is why Obama was reluctant to deliver his speech in October 2002 -- not because he didn't believe
in his message but because he didn't believe in the people providing the platform.

(The must-read analysis that explains what A.N.S.W.E.R. is really about is here. There's also a good primer here.)

My wife and I attended A.N.S.W.E.R.'s Washington rally and march in October 2002 -- on the same day that Obama
was speaking at A.N.S.W.E.R.'s Chicago event.

Having attended, in late 2001 and earlier in 2002, a number of New York anti-war rallies, marches, and events
where there was a strong A.N.S.W.E.R. presence, we had some idea what to expect from the D.C. event -- and we
were not surprised.

Although there were many good and well-meaning people in Washington that day -- people who were there specifically
to protest against the prospect of war in Iraq -- the event was also a magnet for every "Free Mumia,""Free Palestine,"
"Free Cuba," Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti, Marxist, Communist, Che Guevara, Black Panther, pseudo-revolutionary
cause de guerre you can possibly imagine. (If you were there or have attended other A.N.S.W.E.R. events, you know what
I'm talking about.)

A.N.S.W.E.R. encouraged this by giving all of these voices -- all of them -- equal time on the platform at the rally preceding
the march. By the time we had stood there for something approaching four hours of these speeches -- most of which had
zero to do with Iraq -- it's a wonder we could still remember why we had woken up at 5 in the morning and driven the
nearly 5 hours from New York to march on Washington.

It's reasonable to think that A.N.S.W.E.R. ran its Chicago event that day the same way -- and that Barack Obama,
having done his research, knew exactly what he was in for.

He knew that he had an important message to deliver on Iraq, but he also knew that, once he got to the rally, that
message would -- likely as not -- be sandwiched between advertisements for the Chicago Communist Party and latter-
day Black Power, Chicago-style.

Perhaps even more important, Obama knew that he could not afford to be seen as supporting the organizers of the rally,
people who, according to one analysis, backed the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; portrayed reports of atrocities and
mass rape by the Serb forces during the Bosnian War as "imperialist lies"; helped found the International Committee to
Defend Slobodan Milosevic; and now openly support Kim Jong-il.

Surely, it is precisely because Obama's first order of business was to distance himself from A.N.S.W.E.R. that the very first
words out of his mouth in October 2002 were: "Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally,
I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances."

I probably have some symapathy with a number of the leftist groups who were at A.N.S.W.E.R.'s Washington rally -- people
whose agendas were often, at best, periperipheral to the reason for the march. But do I blame Barack Obama for being wary
about giving his speech at a similar event organized by the same group? Absolutely not.

Was Obama looking for an "in" to David Axelrod? Who knows?

By far the more important point is that Obama had something on his mind that he knew had to be said, and that he
was determined to say it -- even if, by doing so, he put himself at risk of being associated with people that he found
politically and morally reprehensible.

Obama understood that, at the end of the day, his message on Iraq was more important than who was paying for
the megaphone.

Frankly, I can't imagine Hillary Clinton or John Edwards putting themselves on a Marxist-sponsored speaking platform
to say the right thing about anything -- even if they thought that doing so would get them one step closer to the
consultant they wanted. They simply wouldn't risk that much of themselves.

That Barack Obama did is just one reason why he has my vote and they don't.