Smear campaign targets Obama's 'link to terrorist'

BARACK Obama's campaign team yesterday said the Republicans had launched a muck-raking war in the final stages of the election race after Sarah Palin accused the Democratic candidate of "palling around with terrorists".

Mrs Palin, reinvigorated by a feisty performance in last week's vice-presidential debate, this weekend revived the controversy of Mr Obama's association with Bill Ayers, a founder member of the terrorist group Weather Underground, which carried out bombings in America in the early 1970s.

"We see America as the greatest force for good in this world," said Mrs Palin, campaigning in the swing state of Colorado. "Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The Obama campaign hit back hard, accusing Republicans of repeating the so-called Swift Boat campaign of 2004 in which Democratic hopeful John Kerry was falsely accused, through a TV advertising campaign, of lying about his Vietnam war service.

"It's not surprising they would be launching Swift Boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation's economic ills," said spokesman Hari Sevugan.

Mr Obama's association with Mr Ayers has been a perennial feature of the election campaign. Mr Ayers, now a university professor in Chicago, was picked along with Mr Obama to sit on a charity board in the 1990s to raise money for a school improvement project.

The project itself has passed scrutiny, and managers of the Obama campaign say their candidate did not choose Mr Ayers to serve on the committee, but simply served alongside him.

Mr Obama says he has had only sporadic contact with Mr Ayers in recent years, most recently in 2005, and that their sole meeting since then was when they bumped into each other on the street where they both live.

But Republicans say the Ayers issue is relevant because a candidate must be judged by those he associates with.

It has featured in negative commercials, along with reminders about two other controversies: Mr Obama's property dealings with convicted fraudster Tony Rezko and his association with controversial black pastor the Rev Jeremiah Wright.

But it is unclear if the charge will stick: Mr Ayers has since admitted to his crimes and become a respected Chicago professor. His links with Mr Obama appear to be tenuous and he is not involved in the election campaign.

"What they're going after is Obama's character. They are implying a lot of things that are not necessarily true," said William McPherson, a Washington political commentator.

The Washington Post reported that, with Mr Obama ahead in the polls and voters angry with the Republican handling of the economy, the McCain campaign had decided to go after Mr Obama's character in the remaining campaigning weeks.

Mr McCain's staff say they will begin showing campaign commercials this week highlighting the ties.

Mr Obama meanwhile is determined to keep the economy as the focus. With Congress agreeing the $700 billion Wall Street bail-out campaign last week, a McCain official was quoted as saying he hoped to put the issue "behind us".

Speaking in North Carolina yesterday, Mr Obama said: "Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They'd rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up.

"It's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time."

An Obama campaign advert to be screened nationwide today derides Mr McCain as erratic in a crisis, reminding viewers that he was formerly a proponent of the deregulation that many blame for the current financial crisis.

McCain brother in 'communist' jibe

THE brother of Republican presidential candidate John McCain made an apparent joke at a campaign rally this weekend that might not play well in parts of the newly electorally competitive state of Virginia.

Joe McCain, speaking at an event in support of his brother, called two Democratic-leaning areas of Northern Virginia "communist country", according to a report in the Washington Post.

"I've lived here for at least ten years and before that, about every third duty I was in either Arlington or Alexandria, up in communist country," Mr McCain, a navy veteran, said of his military postings. He then apologised, but the remark drew laughter from the crowd, according to the report.

Virginia has long been a Republican stronghold in presidential elections, but Barack Obama is running neck and neck with, or ahead of, Mr McCain, in recent state polls.

"This was Joe McCain's unsuccessful attempt at humour," a McCain campaign spokeswoman said.