Big Fat Story
The GOP is invoking Obama's friend who gave birth to the Weather Underground and expresses no regrets about his violent past
Ayers, the scion of a wealthy Chicago family, founded the Weather Underground, a terrorist organization that bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and the State Department, and whose members murdered policemen. His website, decorated with a picture of the Cuban firebrand Che Guevara and a communist red star, depicts his work in education that has won the praise of Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago. Ayers gave an interview on September 11, 2001, published in the New York Times, declaring, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Liberals and conservatives alike have criticized Ayers for his memoir of his time as a terrorist, "Fugitive Days."
The Times story overlooked key facts about the Obama/Ayers relationship
The novelist and essayist John Batchelor poses a series of pointed questions about holes in the Times story: “ Most importantly, when and where did Barack Obama first meet Bill Ayers?...Is it coincidence or significant that Barack Obama and his spokespersons have changed the explanations about the nature of the relationship between Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama several times since the fact of it was first introduced to the presidential campaign this year?”
Ayers likes to forget he once urged children to kill their parents
In his boastful memoir Fugitive Days, Ayers does not dismiss the thought of committing similar acts today. "I can't quite imagine putting a bomb in a building today—all of that seems so distinctly a part of then. But I can't imagine entirely dismissing the possibility, either," he wrote. And his auto-hagiography fails to remind readers of his bloodthirsty 1970 call to arms: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at." He likes America for its faulty justice—"Guilty as hell, free as a bird—it’s a great country," he wrote in Fugitive Days, but he has contempt for those who believe America is genuinely a great country: ‘It makes me want to puke.’
Photo: Bettmann/Corbis
Will the Bill Ayers link hurt Obama?
With only four weeks to go before election day, the McCain campaign is training its guns on Obama’s character and judgment, especially his relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers
Did the Grey Lady whitewash what it found out about Obama’s connection to Ayers?
Eight long months after the first story about the Ayers/Obama relationship appeared in Politico.com, the New York Times got round to publishing its own version, reporting links between the two men but concluding they “do not appear to have been close.” Researchers on both the left and right have criticized the Times story, claiming the paper omitted important facts. Steve Diamond, a liberal law professor, a source for the Times story, contends on his blog the Times distorted what he told them and drew wrong conclusions.
Photo: Gary Hershorn/Reuters
Forty years ago, Ayers and other student radicals plotted to overturn the government by violence and murder
The Weather Underground waged a terrorist war against the U.S. Government in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "This organization described itself as a revolutionary organization of communist men and women," relates a 1976 FBI report. A 2003 documentary featured Ayers and his wife and fellow Weather Underground terrorist, now a professor at Northwestern Law School, Bernardine Dohrn. One of the victims of the group’s violence, John Murtagh, son of a New York State judge, recently recalled in the New York Daily News the terror he felt when his home was firebombed. Just last month, Ayers published a cartoon on his website justifying the violent tactics of the Weather Underground.
After George Stephanopoulos first questioned Barack Obama about his links to Ayers in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary debate on April 16, and Obama categorically denied a relationship, the Obama campaign posted a more detailed response on his website. The headings on Obama’s account read: "Reality: Ayers connection is 'phony', 'tenuous', 'a stretch.'"
The Times story overlooked key facts about the Obama/Ayers relationship
The novelist and essayist John Batchelor poses a series of pointed questions about holes in the Times story: “ Most importantly, when and where did Barack Obama first meet Bill Ayers?...Is it coincidence or significant that Barack Obama and his spokespersons have changed the explanations about the nature of the relationship between Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama several times since the fact of it was first introduced to the presidential campaign this year?”
Forty years ago, Ayers and other student radicals plotted to overturn the government by violence and murder
The Weather Underground waged a terrorist war against the U.S. Government in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "This organization described itself as a revolutionary organization of communist men and women," relates a 1976 FBI report. A 2003 documentary featured Ayers and his wife and fellow Weather Underground terrorist, now a professor at Northwestern Law School, Bernardine Dohrn. One of the victims of the group’s violence, John Murtagh, son of a New York State judge, recently recalled in the New York Daily News the terror he felt when his home was firebombed. Just last month, Ayers published a cartoon on his website justifying the violent tactics of the Weather Underground.
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