John M. Murtagh, a practicing attorney and member of the city council in Yonkers, New York, has released a statement today in which he says that when he was 9 years old, his home was firebombed by the Weathermen, the domestic terrorist group Barack Obama-associate Bill Ayers belonged to.
The City Journal ran a story on this attack several months ago where Murtagh tells what happened during this firebombing, and what life was like for this boy afterward:
Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our 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. (Today, of course, we’d call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night.
I still recall, as though it were a dream, thinking that someone was lifting and dropping my bed as the explosions jolted me awake, and I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside. The same night, bombs were thrown at a police car in Manhattan and two military recruiting stations in Brooklyn. Sunlight, the next morning, revealed three sentences of blood-red graffiti on our sidewalk: FREE THE PANTHER 21; THE VIET CONG HAVE WON; KILL THE PIGS.
For the next 18 months, I went to school in an unmarked police car.
This is the statement released by Murtagh today:
ARLINGTON, Va., October 8 /Standard Newswire/ -- Today, John M. Murtagh made the following statement on Barack Obama's relationship with William Ayers:
"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.
Why would Barack Obama go to Weatherman Bill Ayers' home and allow this man to help launch his political career?
Why would Barack Obama join the Chicago Annenberg Challenge founded by Ayers, work on its board with Ayers and on other projects with Ayers?
Ayers remains unrepentant for his behavior, which included bombings of the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and other government buildings.
Would you associate with someone like Bill Ayers?
Would you vote for someone who would associate with him?
2 comments:
I'm just curious..do you believe that people can reform? Or do you believe that crimes committed by people in their twenties ought make them someone to shun for the rest of their lives. Because Ayers said this: "Some readers apparently responded to her piece, published on the same day as the vicious terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, by associating my book with them. This is absurd. My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy. It begins literally in the shadow of Hiroshima and comes of age in the killing fields of Southeast Asia. My book criticizes the American obsession with a clean and distanced violence, and the culture of thoughtlessness and carelessness that results from it."
Anonymous, I not only believe people can reform, I know they can. I'm one who reformed from a drunken, foul-mouthed skirt-chaser to, well, something at least better than that thanks totally to God.
However, Bill Ayers has given no indication that he has reformed. Oh, I'm familiar with the statement you included, and at least one other like it. However, I have never, ever, anywhere, seen him specifically apologize or express regret for the terrorist bombings he and his group did. In fact, he is on record in 2001 stating "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
And as recently as April 2008 he bashed our brave men and women who fought to keep South Vietnam free of communist oppression. He also trashed capitalism as being "built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war and racism" and said it "must be defeated."
Reformed? Doesn't sound like he's reformed one iota. Cut his hair and put on some decent clothes--sure. Reformed? Don't see it.
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