Obama Wrong to Compare Terrorist to Coburn, McCain Says
Penny Starr
Senior Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) - In a interview Sunday on ABC's "This Week" presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) association with Weather Underground member William Ayers and his comparison of Ayers to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) "borders on outrage."
The Weather Underground, or Weathermen, were a group of American radical left revolutionaries from the late 1960s/early 1970s, some of whose members carried out a terrorist campaign designed to overthrow the U.S. government. William Ayers participated in bombings against police stations and U.S. government buildings.
"(Obama) became friends with (Ayers) and spent time with him while the guy was unrepentant over his activities as a member of a terrorist group," McCain told "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos. "And then to compare him to Dr. Tom Coburn who spends so much of his life bringing babies into this world. That fact, in my view, borders on outrage."
At the Democratic debate in Philadelphia Wednesday Obama defended his relationship with Ayers and then compared it to his friendship with Coburn.
"The fact is that I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions," Obama said. "Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements? Because I certainly don't agree with those either."
Stephanopoulos said that Obama noted he was only eight-years old when Ayers was connected to a series of bomb attacks in the U.S. in the 1970s and that he doesn't agree with the remarks Ayers made in a New York Times article published on Sept. 11, 2001.
"I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers said then. "I feel we didn't do enough."
Obama said he "doesn't agree" with those comments, but "does he condemn him?" McCain said. "Does he - would he condemn someone who says that they're unrepentant and wished that they had bombed more?"
McCain described Coburn as "a great doctor, a great man, a great humanitarian" and "one of the great spokesmen for the rights of the unborn." And "the worst thing of all -- that I think really indicates Senator Obama's attitude -- is that he had the incredible statement that he compared Mr Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist, with Senator Tom Coburn. Senator Coburn, a physician who goes to Oklahoma on the weekends and brings babies into life. Comparing those two, I mean, that's not - that's an attitude, frankly, that certainly isn't in keeping with the overall attitude of the American people."
Both Ayers and Obama reportedly served on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago between 1999 and 2002. And Ayers "contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois Senate in April 2001," as reported by Washingtonpost.com.
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