'Trust Me, Republicans, Going After Obama for His ‘Terrorist Ties’ is a Very Bad Idea'

[seafan]

Over at The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder reports that according to the New York Sun, a major 527 effort by the Republicans to smear Barack Obama is underway:

... a Sacramento Republican linked to a McCain bundler is raising money for a new group called "Leadership for America's Future."

** The American Issues Project is spending $3m on a battleground state ad campaign that ties Obama to ex-Weatherman William Ayres.

** Freedom's Watch, which plays mostly in House elections, has spent nearly $500,000 worth of hard money on ads against Obama.

** Vets for Freedom plans a $10m campaign on ads touting the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

** The Republican Majority Campaign has tallied more than $1.3 million in independent expenditures against Obama.

Let's take a look at the attempt described above to smear Obama with William Ayres.


First, who is William Ayres?

Ayres is Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society.
He also spent the 1970s as a fugitive from justice, as a member of the Weather Underground, after the domestic terrorist group, preparing to attack an Army base, accidentally exploded a Greenwich Village townhouse killing three of their own members. Ayres later married feather Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn, then on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.

.....

As celebrated members of the Chicago liberal world, Ayres and Obama have some connections.

They served on a board together when Obama was a state senator. Ayres donated $200 to Obama's campaign in 2001. They sat on a panel together in 2002 called "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis." Obama went to Ayres and Dohrn's home in 1995 to be introduced to some of the more influential liberals in the area by the state senator he was preparing to succeed, Alice Palmer.

.....

"Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school," Obama senior strategist David Axelrod told the Politico. "They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together." (Ayres' kids are actually much older than Obama's but Dohrn is still active at the school.)


.....

"Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence," Obama spokesman Bill Burton told the New York Sun when asked about the connection. "But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost 40 years ago is ridiculous."

Now, for some ammunition against this Republican 527 smear, aimed at Obama:



Commentary: Trust Me, Republicans, Going After Obama for His ‘Terrorist Ties’ is a Very Bad Idea

September 04, 2008
By: Gregory Kane

A word of advice to my fellow Republicans: You don't want to make an issue of Sen. Barack Obama’s friendship with William Ayers. You’d darn well better trust me on this one.

Last week, the airwaves of conservative talk radio -- a.k.a. “angry white guy radio” -- were filled with people on a rant about how the Obama camp was trying to suppress an ad put out by a group called American Issues Project. The ad all but called Obama a terrorist because he’s buddies with Ayers, who, in the 1970s, was a member of the Weather Underground, an offshoot of the radical, predominantly white group Students for a Democratic Society.
Folks at AIP called Ayers “an unrepentant terrorist.” Now, I’m not going to dispute AIP’s characterization of Weather Underground as a terrorist group. It’s probably more accurate than what I called Weather Underground back in the ‘70s, which was something along the lines of “Crazy White Boys.”

But do AIP members -- who, according to their Web site, “champion the conservative values that have made the United States of America a blessed nation” -- really want to start throwing words like “terrorist” around and talking about who associates with whom?

Instead of objecting to the AIP ad, Obama should welcome it. He should tell AIP and Sen. John McCain that if they want a debate about which political party supports, coddles and nurtures terrorists on American soil, then they should bring the pain. Because Obama, if he knows his facts, should have plenty of pain to give in return.

Anyone ever heard of Orlando Bosch? He’s definitely NOT a friend of Obama’s. He is a friend of the Bush family. Bosch is a known, anti-Castro terrorist who’s suspected of being the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jet that left 76 passengers dead, although he’s never been found guilty of that crime in court.

When Bosch sneaked into America back in the 1980s, he was hit with immigration charges. Officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI pegged Bosch as a terrorist and wanted him deported. But Jeb Bush, before he became governor of Florida, was all buddy-buddy with members of that anti-Castro, Cuban-American mob that has a stranglehold on Miami. He convinced his daddy -- then-President George H.W. Bush -- to give Bosch a pardon.

.....

And today, Orlando Bosch walks free on the streets of Miami.




Orlando Bosch

Here are Orlando's buddies:


Jeb Bush

.....

Bosch is the suspected brains behind a bombing that killed nearly 100. Who’s the worst terrorist? And to which political party do his buddies belong?

Then we have Luis Posada Carriles, another anti-Castro terrorist suspected of not only being in on the bombing of the Cuban jet, but of a string of late 1990s bombings in Havana that left one Italian tourist quite dead. The anti-Castro, Cuban-American, Republican mob in Miami view both Bosch and Posada as freedom fighters. But, as the saying goes, one guy’s freedom fighter is another guy’s terrorist.

And today, Posada Carriles walks free on the streets of Miami.



Luis Posada Carriles



And here are Posada's buddies:

I’m sure Obama would have no problem in stacking his freedom fighter/terrorist buddy up against the freedom fighter/terrorist buddies of Republicans any day of the week. In fact, the AIP ad presents an opportunity for Obama to really embarrass Republicans.

Since AIP so happily introduced the issue of domestic terrorism into the campaign, Obama can now ask what group of people has committed the greatest number of terrorist acts on American soil (Hint: Look toward the southern part of Florida.). Obama can ask why Posada was never tried on charges of violating the Neutrality Act, which the FBI had nailed him on for conspiring with other anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Union City, N.J. for the 1990s Havana bombings.

I made some calls recently to FBI officials, who would neither confirm nor deny that their files on Posada for violating the Neutrality Act were “lost.” A flack at the Department of Justice would neither confirm nor deny it either.

Obama needs to issue a challenge to McCain: Will the next president order the FBI to produce those files so Posada can be tried for violating the Neutrality Act?

Posada was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency in the use of explosives. If he were to take the witness stand in his own defense, he might spill his guts about who the real terrorists on American soil are.

And what political party their friends belong to.

Bring it on, Republican crime syndicate.

[TooBigaTent]

1. You are expecting reason and judgement from the American public. WRONG!!!! All they will hear is

Obama ==> Weathermen and their side wins that point.

The media cover that angle ad nauseum but would devote no time/space to the more obvious associations of the pukes.

You forget that Americans do not respond to reason, but rather, to simplistic, emotional appeals.

Add the media whoring full-time for the thugs and you lose the battle.