Thomas Sowell ends one of his great columns with:

Back in the 18th century, Helvetius said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off." Too many voters still have not learned that lesson. They need to look at the track record of Obama's actions.

Back in the days of "The Lone Ranger" program, someone would ask, "Who is that masked man?" People need to start asking that question about Barack Obama.

Of course, I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of the public won't bother, as hopey changitude is more than enough for them.

One of the things that will mostly be ignored is the fact that Obama had been a senator for all of 143 days before he began his quest for the presidency. 143 days. That's just a little longer than John Kerry was in Viet Nam.

So it should come as no surprise when he says things like this when called to task by his base for seeming to soften his stance on the war in Iraq:

"I am absolutely committed to ending the war," Obama recently declared. "I will call my Joint Chiefs of Staff in and give them a new assignment and that is to end the war."

As Dean Barnett points out, while most critics concentrated on the first part of the statement (the absolute committment to defeat), few paid attention to the last part.

Folks, the JCS are not in the chain-of-command. They are, for the most part, an advisory group. They don't issue orders to commanders in the field. If Obama wants to end the war the order is issued to his CENTCOM commander to wrap it up and bring them home. While not a huge thing, it is indicative.

Ignorance of how the system works as an obvious result of inexperience. Do we really want an OJT president?

Then the RNC takes aim at Obama's past position on Iraq and he and his campaign's rather poor attempts to say he was saying what he's saying now all along:

Who is this masked man? A community organizer, a one-term state senator and a US Senator with 143 days of experience who doesn't know where he stands on the war, much less how to end it - that's who.