Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) controversial former pastor lashed out at the U.S. government and the media on Monday, saying that the black church is the real target of the political backlash over his comments.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose post-Sept. 11 comments critical of America have raised questions about what his relationship with Obama means to the candidate, has been on a multi-stop tour to restore his image and talk about his church, which he said is largely invisible to white America.

“This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; this is an attack on the black church,” said Wright, who cast his speech and question-and-answer session at the Press Club as the start of a two-day “symposium” on the black church.

Whatever it is labeled, it comes at a poor time for Obama and his presidential hopes, as he continues to battle over the final states and superdelegates in the Democratic contest with a resilient Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

While Obama has continued to distance himself from Wright, Wright has taken to speaking without regard for his former parishioner’s political message and campaign.

“He’s obviously free to speak his mind, but I just want to emphasize that this is my former pastor,” Obama told The New York Times. “Many of the statements that he has made both to trigger this initial controversy and that he’s made over the last several days are not statements that I’ve heard him make previously. They don’t represent my views and they don’t represent what this campaign is about.”

A large group of Wright supporters were present at Monday’s press club breakfast, providing him with raucous applause when he lambasted the media on several occasions.

Wright said that more than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq “over a lie” and that his church was in the right when the government was wrong during apartheid in South Africa and conflicts in Central America and the Middle East.

Playing off the crowd’s energy, Wright even suggested he would be interested in the vice presidency and took a shot at current Vice President Dick Cheney, who has never served in the military.

When asked about whether he considered himself patriotic, he said, “I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?”

Wright also reasserted Monday that Obama was only disavowing his comments for political reasons. He insisted that Obama wasn’t distancing himself from his former pastor but that he had to disavow his comments to remain politically viable.

And if Obama were to become president, he said he has provided him with a warning about their relationship.

“I said last year, ‘If you get elected, November the 5th I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people,’ ” Wright said.

Many of Wright’s comments were in this anti-government vein, including the most biting passages from his speech.

He didn’t back off of past statements in which he has suggested that the government created the AIDS virus as a means for committing genocide against blacks, saying that after the Tuskegee experiments and slavery, he believes the government is “capable of doing anything.”

He mentioned the number of students his church has sent to higher education and seminary, as well as the military. He also noted its community service work, including building senior citizen housing and helping the homeless in Chicago.

“Our congregation feeds over 5,000 homeless and needy families every year while our government cuts food stamps and spend billions fighting [wars],” he said.

In addition to social services, Wright said stiffer penalties for crack cocaine unfairly target blacks, while whites use powder cocaine and avoid such penalties.

He also praised Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, asserting that he doesn’t agree with Farrakhan on some things but that he admired his ability to put together the Million Man March.

He suggested Farrakhan has been mislabeled an anti-Semite for 20-year-old comments that Wright said were anti-Zionism, not anti-Judaism.

“He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st centuries,” Wright said. “When Louis Farrakhan speaks … all black America listens. Whether they agree with him or not, they listen.”

Wright’s criticism of the media was mostly based on his assertion that his previously reported comments were being taken out of context and looped as sound bites.

He had fun early in his speech, slyly echoing the moderator’s remarks that the applause being heard by television viewers was not necessarily that of the working press in the room.

Wright also said that even though he was not invited to Obama’s presidential campaign announcement last year, he did pray with the candidate prior to the event.

“I started it off downstairs with him, his wife and children in prayer; that’s what pastors do,” Wright said. “When he went out in public, that wasn’t about prayer … What took place upstairs was political.”

Obama said Sunday in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace that questions about Wright and their relationship are legitimate.

That relationship has begun to be used as fodder in GOP television ads in the South, including in special House elections in Mississippi and Louisiana, and the gubernatorial election in North Carolina.