Why is this news? Why is this an issue? It's only "news" if you let Republicans control the messaging, and use a simple trip to a foreign country as a way to depict Obama as a scaaaary Muslim.

It'll be refreshing to have a President who not only knows that there's a country outside of America, but who's been to one or two of them.

The only reason this is news is because I guraantee we will be hearing about it from the GOP 527s sometime down the road. By bringing this story out now it gives us a chance to immunize Obama from the coming unfair attacks.

Obama knows this, that is why he is telling us about it. Don't jump ugly on Greg for repeating what Obama said. If anything Greg is helping Obama.

Sounds like a similar trip I made abroad to Paris and to London after graduation from college in 2005. Hotel La Manufacture, although called a hostel, was one of the best that I'd stayed in during that trip. If anyone's going to Paris, I'd definitely recommend Hotel La Manufacture for the continental breakfast alone. Plus, it's in the 13th Arrondisement, and is right off the Place d' Italie subway stop so you can easily travel around Paris.

I really should go back to Paris sometime, when the dollar isn't pathetically low compared to the Euro.

Dick Cheney has made a number of Trips to Pakistan.

Better keep an eye on Dick Hussain Cheney.

It puts that so called American in a whole different light .

Shooting accident my arse. How do we know that Dick Hussain Cheney was not running a training camp in Texas when he supposedly accidentally shot someone.

OMG! He went to India? Maybe he's secertly a soma-swilling Hindu! I hear that the GOP has a photo of Obama with an orange dot on his forehead to prove this, and that they're waiting to roll this out at the proper time. I also heard that he was forced to marry a goat while he was in Karachi, something about some angry farmer....it's all true, I swear! A friend of a friend saw it in the reader comments on HufferPost!

Another "As far as I know" from Clinton:

“So I’m not quite sure exactly where Senator Obama has been. So far as I know, he’s maybe taken two trips. But that’s fine, I mean, he can say whatever he wishes about his own experience and we’ll leave it up to voters to determine who really is ready to be commander in chief and who is ready to restore America’s standing and moral authority in the world,” Clinton said.

It wasn't the content Greg, it was the fact that you gave the article the exact same vague, pseudo-menacing title that Fox News would have.

It's news BECAUSE the right wingers would try to use it as a scary muslim nugget. But that doesn't mean you have to help enable that exact meme in your reporting.

In other news, a number of reporters are staked outside of Rob Lowe's apartment right now, trying to get to the bottom of the blackmail scandal. Another number of reporters are at Starbucks, having coffee.

We will continue to keep you abreast to their activities throughout the day.

Still a NON-ISSUE, Greg. One that you sensationalized in your cherry picking and title choice... just like Fox or Drudge would do.

The question is why?

It seems you're playing gotcha with the Obama campaign and playing stenographer with Clinton campaign.

Again, the question is why?

Time to lay it on the table. At least then we can take what is said and printed with the knowledge of where it is coming from.

Who do you support in the primary and why?

Less snark, more substance:

Did this come out because of the Passport breach?

I mean, obviously he hadn't mentioned it for a reason before, no? Considering even a progressive blog like TPM couldn't resist the innuendo headline, it's clear that the Limbaugh crowd will wink wink all over it (not that that matters since they would do it over his name and color anyway), so it leaves me to wonder, where did this news come from? A passport maybe? Who after that?

What is scary (for lack of a better word) is the amount of attention paid to few words that mention going to Pakistan that so many reporters (see headline at HuffPost) are focused on. In fact, the Pakistan part was not even his complete sentence--"I went to Pakistan in the 1980s and I knew the difference between Shia and Sunni..."

When I first read that part of his talk, I thought it was funny because he seemed to be making a subtle jab against those who are in government and don't know Sunni from Shi'ite (i.e. McCain) while he knew the difference as a young man and the Islamic world was not at the center of our foreign policy concerns. In other words, it seems a minor political jab and not that big a deal.

That this non-story continues reminds me of how we seem to live in an ahistorical world where the past and the present merge so that "what is true today was always so and always will be." Pakistan in 1980s was probably one of the more safer countries to visit--certainly more so than India which was facing the Tamal uprising.

I suspect that the next series of questions will concern the identity of this friend and I would not be surprised if there is not an investigation of this friend and his ties to . Moreover, going back to ahistoricity, I suspect that this will be used to raise suspicion about Obama's so-called "Muslim" identity.

Maybe I've become too overly suspicious.... I should probably lay off the blogs for a few days to detox.

Obviously he was in Pakistan scouting bomb targets, part of his master plan as documented in his kindergarten papers outlining his future presidential campaign.

I hope they bring this up. It's so over the top, it makes them look absolutely ridiculous. As any have noted, the whispering campaign has been underway for a long time, with little success, if any.

Smears this fanciful are best left to Robert Ludlum.

People forget...in 1981 Bin Laden and the early beginnings of Al Queda were working for the CIA in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. Back then they were the "good guys".