Keeping Hope Alive

With so many 24-hour news channels and cable news shows on television, Senator Obama says facts often get distorted, which has led to a decline of truth in America. "[Americans] are so interested in spin," he says. Senator Obama believes that the highest branches of government "massaged and manipulated" facts to make a case for the war in Iraq.

Back in 2002, before he announced that he was going to run for Senate, Senator Obama was at a political rally about a mile away from Oprah's studio, where he says he voiced his opposition to the war in Iraq. "People were really beating the drum of war,'" he says. "I said it was a bad idea because, at that time, I had a sense that we didn't have evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."