Obama's Foul Weather Friends

[This excerpt is pinched from another web site, which I won't name in order to avoid screaming and hollering about their precious copyright. With the country facing this terrible threat, I think we all have more important things to worry about. - HAC]

The lack of media interest in the role of former domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn in Democratic nominee Barack Obama's political ascent in Chicago is one of the most remarkable aspects of the 2008 presidential campaign. When the question is raised at all, reporters are quick to repeat Sen. Obama's claim that his relationship with the two former bomb-makers was fleeting and casual. Some cite Chicago mayor Richard Daley's defense of Ayers as a "distinguished professor of education" and "a valued member of the Chicago community." Why then should there be cause for concern?

Weatherman was a revolutionary communist sect that split from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969. Weatherman's founding document called for a "white fighting force" that would be "akin to the Red Guard in China" to work with the Black Liberation Movement and other "anti-colonial" movements to bring about a communist revolution and destroy "US imperialism." Weatherman committed at least 40 bombings between 1969 and 1975. Targets included the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Capitol, other government buildings, military bases, police offices and corporations. Two of the group's primary leaders were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Defenders argue that Weatherman was not a terrorist group, since it frequently tipped off police about the devices. Bill Ayers recently called the bombings "a dramatic form of armed propaganda" and claimed "no one was ever hurt." In reality, the relatively low death toll from the bombing campaign was mostly due to technical incompetence.

On March 6, 1970, three members of Weatherman were killed when a powerful bomb they were constructing exploded prematurely. The device had been made from dynamite, wrapped with roofing nails to maximize casualties. Its intended target was a dance for noncommissioned officers and their dates scheduled for that evening at Fort Dix. The bomb that killed three in a Greenwich Village townhouse would have killed far more on a crowded dance floor.

Larry Grathwohl, an undercover FBI agent who infiltrated Weatherman, later testified that Ayers had identified Bernadine Dohrn as the person who bombed a San Francisco police station in February 1970, killing one officer and injuring two others. The agent also said that Ayers had constructed a bomb made from 13 sticks of dynamite that the group placed in a Detroit police officers' association building. The agent contacted the police, who cleared the area, but the bomb failed to explode. Ayers' murderous intent was clear enough, however. According to the FBI agent, "Bill said that we should plan our bombing to coincide with the time when there would be the most people in those buildings."

[Those Secret Service mooks who visited me last month might want to ask themselves what they're doing protecting a character who's chummy with cop-killers.]