McCain campaign has its own questionable connections to bombers and assassins (Slate)

The GOP's Bill Ayers?The McCain campaign has its own questionable connections to bombers and assassins.
By A.L. Bardach
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008, at 3:40 PM ET

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McCain's campaign, however, has its own questionable connections to terrorists. Since John F. Kennedy's failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Florida's Cuban-Americans have been regarded as a reliable Republican voting block. And from 1960 until Sept. 11, 2001, some exile hard-liners in Miami endorsed a double standard on terrorism in which anti-Castro militants and bombers were judged to be "freedom fighters," regardless of the civilian deaths and collateral damage they caused in Cuba and the United States, as well as elsewhere. While the Cuban-American community has undergone dramatic changes—with the majority now supporting dialogue with Cuba and an end to restrictions on travel and remittances—hard-liners still control the major levers of power in Miami. Such is their clout in turning out reliable voters that McCain dropped his stance of 2000, when he said he would support normalizing relations with Cuba even under Fidel Castro. ("I'd be willing to do the same thing we did with—with Vietnam.") McCain has allied his campaign with the Cuban Liberty Council, an uncompromising anti-Castro group that has all but dictated policy to George W. Bush. Two of the council's most prominent members, media personality Ninoska Perez-Castellon and her husband, Roberto Martin Perez, have been among McCain's most dedicated campaigners and champions in Miami.

As a result, McCain's campaign and advisers find themselves allied with and/or supporting militants who have committed acts that any reasonable observer would define as terrorism. On July 20, while campaigning for McCain in Miami and just prior to speaking at a McCain event, Sen. Joe Lieberman met with the wife of convicted serial bomber Eduardo Arocena and promised to pursue a presidential pardon on his behalf. Arocena is the founder of the notorious Cuban exile militant group Omega 7, renowned for a string of bombings from 1975 to 1983. Arocena was convicted of the 1980 murder of a Cuban diplomat in Manhattan. In 1983, Arocena was arrested and charged with 42 counts pertaining to conspiracy, explosives, firearms, and destruction of foreign government property within the United States. He is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison in Indiana.

His targets included:

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Madison Square Garden (he blew up an adjacent store);
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JFK airport (Arocena's group planted a suitcase bomb intended for a TWA flight to Los Angeles—in protest of the airline's flights to Cuba. The plane would have exploded if not for the fact that the bomb went off on the tarmac prior to being loaded);
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Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center (causing damage to three levels of the theater and halting the performance of a music group from Cuba);
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the ticket office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot;
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and a church.

He also attempted to assassinate the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations.

MORE AT:
http://www.slate.com/id/2202183/

And I also won't be surprised when the media ignores this.

Oh, right, the guy didn't blow up the Roman Colosseum. :P

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Cheers
BK

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