Obama's Weathermen Pals
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| Fri, 10-10-2008 - 3:23am |
DEROY MURDOCK
Barack Obama's supporters have trivialized his connections to former Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on April 16. Campaign strategist David Axelrod told CNN Monday that Obama "certainly didn't know the history" of these two barbarians when they hosted a reception for him when he launched his political career.
Obama might not have heard of Ayers and Dohrn's brutality from the '60s through the '80s had they merely tossed a rock or two in anger. But these two went much, much farther.
In 1970, Ayers encapsulated the Weathermen's worldview: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents." In his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days," Ayers brags that he helped blast NYPD headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.
Dohrn was an equally stalwart subversive. In July 1969, while John McCain languished in the Hanoi Hilton, Dohrn and five other Weathermen flew to Cuba to conspire with the National Liberation Front, America's North Vietnamese enemies. Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called her "the most dangerous woman in America."
Throughout the 1970s, under Ayers and Dohrn's leadership, the Weathermen blasted the State Department, Gulf Oil's Pittsburgh headquarters, and New York's Queens Courthouse, among at least 16 targets.
Thankfully, one particular bomb detonated early. Three Weathermen fatally blew themselves up in March 1970 while building it in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The Weathermen wanted the nail-filled device to explode at New Jersey's Fort Dix Army base during a non-commissioned officers' dance. Soldiers, their spouses, and dates would have been maimed and likely killed. As Ayers said, the bomb would have ripped "through windows and walls and, yes, people too."
No wonder Obama has been so evasive about his ties to Ayers and Dohrn. His relationship with these extreme Leftists goes far beyond waving at some folks who live nearby. It defies belief that Obama never learned that Ayers and Dohrn hated the USA and loved TNT.
Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers inaugurated. They jointly attended at least seven of that charity's top-level oversight meetings between March 1995 and September 1997. They jointly met a dozen times as board members of Chicago's Woods Fund between December 1999 and December 2002. They appeared together on two academic panels in 1997 and 2002. Obama concisely reviewed one of Ayers' books in the Chicago Tribune.
Ayers and Dohrn invited Windy City liberals into their living room to meet Obama when he began his 1995 State Senate run. Ayers donated $200 to re-elect Obama in 2001.
These considerable ties might be irrelevant if Ayers and Dohrn regretted their actions. But they are far from remorseful.
"I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers said in an interview published Sept. 11, 2001 -- while Obama knew Ayers. That August, Ayers posed for a Chicago Magazine photo in which he stomped on an American flag crumpled in the dirt. Headline: "No regrets."
"We'd do it again," Dohrn told ABC in 1998. "I wish that we had done more. I wish we had been more militant."
If these facts are news to Obama, he must be the most oblivious man on Chicago's South Side. But if he knew about Ayers and Dohrn's background, he is being untruthful about it. At the very least, Obama showed dreadful judgment by closely and repeatedly associating with these violent traitors.
Obama today calls Ayers' behavior "detestable acts." But what did Ayers and Dohrn see in Obama? What inspired these unrepentant, hard-Left bomb throwers to hand the chairmanship of Ayers' foundation and then share their home and friends with the charismatic then-35-year-old whose current 95.5 percent Left-wing vote record made him The National Journal's "Most Liberal Senator In 2007?"

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All it means is that we are willing to give others an opinion even if we don't agree with it. Isn't that the freedom our
Maybe you are not aware, or have perhaps forgotten, there was one significant difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Today we have an 'all volunteer' army. You are only called to serve if you have voluntarily enlisted. During the Vietnam War we had the draft - young men HAD to serve. This is significant because many Americans disagreed with our involvement with the Vietnam War and many young men never came home. Nearly everyone knew someone who had died during that war or had become a prisoner during that war. So many in fact that we wore bracelets with their names. It was a time of radical protests and horrible things like the Kent State Massacre where several students were shot by the National Guard for protesting the Vietnam War.
Perhaps you would feel differently about Ayers if your son, or brother, or father were drafted to fight a war you didn't agree with, a war that dragged on and on with no end in sight. Perhaps not, but some of the changes to our military, and to the lowering of the voting age, came about as a result of that war and the protests it engendered. If you didn't live during that time you probably won't understand, and if you don't understand I actually pray the time never comes when you have to live through another time like the Vietnam War.
I wonder how much longer
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Ah, you had me "pegged" did you?
it is illegal to desecrate an american flag...maybe that is why it bothers people so much...because it is illegal!
I don't believe that freedom of speech enables people to do unlawful things (of any variety)
-Kristen
Where is it illegal to desecrate the American flag?
Um, no, it's not...
Google "Flag desecration amendment" and you will find that the last time it was proposed, it failed (June 2006).
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