Obama tells enormous Berlin crowd there are more walls to be torn down in fighting extremism

Cheered by an enormous international crowd, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago. Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the evening was awash in politics as the first-term U.S. senator sought to burnish his international credentials for the fall campaign at home. His remarks before a crowd estimated at more than 200,000 inevitably invited comparison to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Now a presidential candidate himself, Obama borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign audiences in the U.S. this year, as he spoke in one of the great cities of Europe.... [read full story]