I only say this because I have heard the charge TEN TIMES today...

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Bill Ayers did not say "I wish we had done more" on 9/11/01.

That comment was coincidentally published on 9/11. (The interview took place earlier, of course.)

[Hayabusa]

1. Thank You!

Surprisingly, those who always say this fail to mention that part of it...

[KewlKat]

2. Here's the NY Times article that was PUBLISHED on 9/11/01

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

[BuyingThyme]

3. And, of course, John McCain says he said, "I wish I had bombed more."

[PA Democrat]

4. Excerpt from Ayers letter to the Times:

I wrote about Vietnamese lives as a personal American responsibility, then, and the hypocrisy of claiming an American innocence as we constructed and stoked an intricate and hideous chamber of death in Asia. Clearly I wrote and spoke about the export of violence and the government’s love affair with bombs. Just as clearly Dinitia Smith was interested in her journalistic angle and not the truth. This is not a question of being misunderstood or “taken out of context,” but of deliberate distortion.

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. We are now witnessing crimes against humanity in our own land on an unthinkable scale, and I fear that we might soon see innocent people in other parts of the world as well as in the U.S. dying and suffering in response.

All that we witnessed September 11—the awful carnage and pain, the heroism of ordinary people—may drive us mad with grief and anger, or it may open us to hope in new ways. Perhaps precisely because we have suffered we can embrace the suffering of others and gather the necessary wisdom to resist the impulse to lash out randomly. The lessons of the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s may be more urgent now than ever.

Bill Ayers Chicago, IL

Complete letter at:

http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/clarifying-the-facts-a-letter-to-the-new-york-times-9-15-2001/

[Duer 157099]

5. I hope Dave Letterman's team gets the heads up on this

Because McCain repeated that line on his show last night.

And Dave's not the type to let things go, lol. EVER.

Go Dave Go!

[Nederland]

6. You are correct of course

...but defending Bill Ayers is a waste of time. The fact is that at one point in his life he advocated violence and participated in blowing things up. Obama should not waste any time defending him, it's a lose/lose situation.

[Solomon]

7. Look, the smart people already got it, and the dumb ain't gonna

get it, so it's best to forget about Ayers. The problem with the guilt by association gamde is that everyone, I mean everyone, has a friend, associate, relative, or just somebody they have to work with, that they don't share views with. That's the bottom line. It's only a hook for the people that want to vote against Obama.

[Clio the Leo]

8. Exactly, the LAST thing any reporter was trying to do on 9/11...

.... was conducting interviews with tertiary figures. We all had more serious things to be concerned with.

[progressivebydesign]

9. that's been driving me nuts, too. It RAN on 9/11... he was not interviewed that day.

ANyone with reasonable intelligence would have figured that out, that the NYT was not conducting interviews that day. It was just some very very unfortunate timing. But.. we're dealing with people that think "seeing russia from my house" is good foreign policy experience.