Barack Obama‘s campaign is firing on several cylinders today.

He made a carefully calculated “bold speech” today about nuclear disarmament. I’ll be back to talk about that tomorrow morning.

In an act of unprecedented political narcissism, he also celebrated the anniversary of a speech he gave on October 2, 2002:

Obama was in Chicago, marking the fifth anniversary of the speech he gave opposing the war in Iraq.

That speech came on Oct. 2, 2002. Nine days later, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and 75 other U.S. senators voted in favor of a resolution authorizing George W. Bush to use military force in Iraq — a fact Obama drove home repeatedly today, saying that Americans should ask themselves: “Who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right, and who got it wrong?”

This was the famous speech he gave before joining the Senate, in which he opposed the Iraq war.

No doubt Obama deserves to be commended for making that speech. He has been duly commended many times (and not just by himself).

But isn’t it a little dishonest to single out that one speech and ignore other statements he also made about the Iraq war resolution? How come Obama’s campaign wasn’t celebrating on July 26 too? That was the three-year anniversary of a NYT piece in which Obama stated, very honestly:

I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports,” Mr. Obama said. ”What would I have done? I don’t know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.”

There was a time, just a little over three years ago, when Obama was willing to honestly admit that making speeches in Chicago as a state legislator is all very well, but if he had been in the Senate in 2002, and had to vote on the Iraq war resolution, he really couldn’t say how he would have voted. He was willing to admit that the administration’s manipulation of the intelligence they presented to Congress may have had a lot to do with how the vote on the Iraq war resolution turned out.

What happened to that Obama? Wasn’t he the one who had started to run for President?

You can wish yourself a happy anniversary if you like, Senator Obama. Forgive me if I just wish you a happy belated anniversary instead.