Obama’s ‘association’ with the Weathermen
The latest of Republican smears against Obama is his link with former terrorist William Ayers, part of the Weathermen, an Anti-Vietnam extremist group. This association stems from a 1995 meeting at a luncheon, and the two men serving on an anti-poverty board. However, the right wing spin machine would have you believe that Obama supported terrorist activities that were committed when he was just a small child. Even the head prosecutor of the weathermen case says this is bullshit, as he stated in a letter to the New York Times this past friday.
As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division in the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.
Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.
Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.
I do take issue with the statement in your news article that the Weathermen indictment was dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” It was dismissed because of illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions, initiated by John N. Mitchell, attorney general at that time, and W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. assistant director.
William C. Ibershof
Mill Valley, Calif., Oct. 8, 2008
As anyone who has a few minutes to do some reading will find out, this %100 retarded attempt to connect Obama to terrorist activities which took place decades earlier is beyond absurd. It would be like trying to connect Bush to Al Queida based on the fact that his father worked with Osama’s relatives as part of the Carlyle group. Of course there is no need to let the truth get in the way of a good smear campaign.
However, since we’re going to play the ‘Guilt by association’ card though, wasn’t Todd Palin (a.k.a. the republican candidate’s running mate’s husband) a member of a group that wanted Alaska to separate from the union (It doesn’t get more Anti-American than that) from 1995 – 2002? Yet Sarah Palin is married to and has kids with this guy. If Michelle Obama was part of such a group, we would never hear the end of it.
Oh yeah, wasn’t McCain trying to get the support of pastor John Hagee, who stated that gays are responsible for hurricane Katrina and Hitler was doing god’s work? That’s as hateful as anything Reverend Wright said, yet he gets a pass on it. Lets not even get into McCain’s associations with the Keating 5 and Watergare break-in participant Gordon Liddy. Of course, since Republicans can do no wrong…
Gotta love double standards.
Area 4:51 