Update: Changed the link so that it has a byline. Please rec this, DKos readers should be apprised of the situation with McCain.
In a statement released today by the McCain campaign, a victim of the Weather Underground's terror spree stepped forward to denounce Barack Obama's alleged ties to William Ayers. Full text and reaction below the fold.
"When I was 9 years-old the Weather Underground, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama's friend William Ayers, firebombed my house. Barack Obama has dismissed concerns about his relationship with Ayers by noting that he was only a child when Ayers was planting bombs at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. But Ayers has never apologized for his crimes, he has reveled in them, expressing regret only for the fact that he didn't do more.
"While Barack Obama once downplayed his relationship with Ayers, today his campaign took that deceit one step further. Barack Obama now denies he was even aware of his friend's violent past when, in 1995, Ayers hosted a party launching Obama's political career. Given Ayers' celebrity status among the left, it's difficult to believe. The question remains: what did Obama know, and when did he know it? When did Obama learn the truth about his friend? Barack Obama helped Ayers promote his book in 1997, served on charitable boards with him through 2002, and regularly exchanged emails and phone calls with him through 2005. At what point did Barack Obama discover that his friend was an unrepentant terrorist? And if he is so repulsed by the acts of terror committed by William Ayers, why did the relationship continue? Any honest accounting by Barack Obama will necessarily cast further doubt on his judgment and his fitness to serve as commander in chief.
"Barack Obama may have been a child when William Ayers was plotting attacks against U.S. targets -- but I was one of those targets. Barack Obama's friend tried to kill my family."
In February 1970 John Murtagh's father was a New York State Supreme Court justice presiding over the trial of the so-called "Panther 21," members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at their home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. A few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. In late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers's wife, promised more bombings.
Now, I feel for everything that John Murtagh went through and I understand that this is something that no child should have to bear. It is even understandable that the mention of Weather Underground or Bill Ayers would call to mind the worst possible reaction.
But for John McCain to use this man as a political prop is disgusting behavior and a new low for a man I thought could sink no further into the muck. And if John McCain truly thought that Barack Obama's connection to Bill Ayers was a clear and present danger to America, why would he not have voiced this concern loudly from the beginning of this campaign? Why wait until the last minute to smear his opponent with attacks that take the worst of people to new, unholy heights?
The answer is clear: John McCain wants to win so badly that he will accept any bargain - no matter how Faustian in nature - simply to get the prize he so deeply covets. John McCain could have made this case about Mr. Murtagh without asking this man to go on record attacking Obama. But he did, and with the new fervor present at McCain rallies that resulted in the Secret Service having to investigate threats against Obama's life we cannot just keep quiet. We have to let John McCain know that he is endangering the life of a presidential candidate all of his own, selfish ambition.
Shame on him. I'm voting for "that one".