Is Liddy any less a domestic terrorist than Bill Ayers?
During the same period that Bill Ayers was
a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon
Liddy was making plans to firebomb a Washington
think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist,
undertake the Watergate burglary, break into the
office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and
kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican
convention.
In 1998, Liddy gave a fundraiser in his Scottsdale,
Arizona home for McCain's senatorial re-election
campaign -- the two posed for photographs together;
and as recently as May, 2007, as a presidential
candidate, McCain was a guest on Liddy's syndicated
radio show.
Does John McCain "pal around with terrorists?"
Certainly McCain's continuing "association" and relationship with the
convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy
might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn
by the McCain campaign.
In 1998, Liddy gave a fundraiser in his Scottsdale, Arizona home for
McCain's senatorial re-election campaign -- the two posed for
photographs together; and as recently as May, 2007, as a presidential
candidate, McCain was a guest on Liddy's syndicated radio show.
Inexplicably, McCain heaped praise on his host's values. During the
segment, McCain said he was "proud" of Liddy, and praised Liddy's
"adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation
great." From the program:
LIDDY: Your experience in the Hanoi Hilton is remarkable. I mean, I
put in five years in a prison [for masterminding the Watergate
burglary, and associated crimes], but it was here in the United
States, and they didn't torture - the only torture that I had was
being forced to listen to rap music from time to time.
McCAIN: Well, you know, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of your family.
I'm proud to know your son, Tom, who's a great and wonderful guy. And
it's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon. And
congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the
principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.
Which of Liddy's "principles and philosophies" was McCain referring
to? Liddy's advocacy of break-ins? Firebombings? Assassinations?
Kidnappings? Taking target practice with figures nicknamed Bill and
Hillary?
During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather
Underground, Gordon Liddy was making plans to firebomb a Washington
think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist, undertake the
Watergate burglary, break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's
psychiatrist, and kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican
convention.
Re: Liddy's "continued success and adherence to the principles and
philosophies that keep our nation great:"
Did McCain mean to include Liddy's instructions to listeners of his
radio show in 1994 (around the time Ayers and Obama were on a board
together discussing education programs and other plots) on how to
shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents (aim for the head)?
If ATF agents attempt to curtail a citizen's gun ownership, Liddy
counseled, "Well, if the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms comes
to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for
a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests."
More recently, Liddy explained making the Clintons objects of shooting
practice: "I did relate that on the 4th of July of last year, when I
and my family and some friends were out firing away at a
properly-constructed rifle range and we ran out of targets, and so we
- I drew some stick figure targets and I thought we ought to give them
names. So I named them Bill and Hillary, thought it might improve my
aim. It didn't. My aim is good anyway. Now, having said that, I accept
no responsibility for somebody shooting up the White House."
The Liddy-McCain symbiosis has been mentioned in a number of posts on
the Internet - mostly by bloggers and sites identified with The Left.
But the documentation of their interaction (Liddy has also contributed
financially to McCain's presidential campaign) is not a matter of Left
or Right: It is astonishing that, given the prominence of the Ayers
matter accorded by virtually every "mainstream" news outlet in
America, there has been virtually nothing on the subject in the major
newspapers and broadcast networks. This is a real journalistic failure
and abrogation of responsibility.
Is Liddy any less a domestic terrorist than Bill Ayers?
It is a zero-sum argument, for sure. I do not believe, incidentally,
that John McCain shares the most abhorrent of Liddy's values, as
expressed in Liddy's actions during the same period that Ayers was a
Weatherman - and which Liddy continues to express, unapologetically,
to this day.
But McCain has now become so unmoored from the principles he once
espoused, so shameless in his courtship not only of the Republican
"base" but in his eagerness to unleash a poisonous arsenal of
character assassination and guilt-by-association - and
plain-and-simple incitement of people's fears and prejudices - that,
now, inevitably his and Sara Palin's rallies and campaign events have
taken on the aura of mobs at times.
"Kill him," a man in the crowd responded last week, when Palin
declared -yet again - "He's palling around with terrorists who would
target their own country."
In Virginia, the State Republican chairman announced a set of talking
points to campaign volunteers - stressing the incendiary connection,
reported Time magazine, between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden:
"Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon. That is scary," the
Republican chairman said.
The most recent McCain ad on the subject shouts, "Obama worked with
terrorist William Ayers when it was convenient" - perhaps suggesting,
indeed, even that the candidate was there planting bombs.
The intended message of the McCain campaign is, of course, that Obama
is less than patriotic - enunciated even by the candidate's wife,
Cindy: "The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund
my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body," she
recently told a crowd of several thousand, which also heard her
husband and Palin sound similar notes. (The chairman of the Lehigh,
Pa., County Republican Party, William Platt, "implored the crowd to
work hard to elect McCain or wake up November 5 to see 'Barack Obama,
Barack Hussein Obama,' as the president," reported The Washington Post.)
Like Cindy McCain, the campaign's "Ad Facts" also trumpet -
misleadingly - the only troop-funding bill that Obama voted against,
in 2007 - without noting that Obama first voted for the bill, in a
version that included a timetable for withdrawal. Nor did Cindy McCain
mention that her husband, too, voted against the troop-funding bill -
in the version that contained withdrawal language.
Thus has John McCain embarked on a scorched-earth death struggle for
the presidency - cultural warfare that knows no bounds, exceeding
perhaps even the mendacity and ferocity of the campaign waged against
him by George Bush in 2000, and of which McCain once said there was "a
special place in hell" for the Bush operatives who smeared him.
(McCain also said of the Swift-boat attacks against John Kerry by
Republicans in 2004: "I deplore this kind of politics. I think the ad
is dishonest and dishonorable.")
The lethal weapon of the McCain campaign's dreams is the explosive
allegation that, in Palin's words - Obama "pals around with
terrorists." McCain, wisely, did not raise the matter himself in the
last presidential debate. Why?
At the time, much of the commentariat attributed the omission to
McCain's purported concerns that Obama would respond by reciting the
history of McCain's "association" with the S&L swindler Charles
Keating, for which McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee
early in his career, for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening
improperly with federal regulators on behalf of Keating, as part of
the infamous Keating Five scandal.
But the more likely explanation of why McCain avoided a debate
confrontation about "palling around with terrorists" is McCain's very
real - and recent - symbiotic association and praise for another (not
Ayers) domestic terrorist emblematic of the Vietnam era: G. Gordon Liddy.
~~ Carl Bernstein
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-bernstein/ayers-and-the-mccain-g-go_b_134256.html
http://tinyurl.com/3jnks8
