Anti-Vietnam War activist William Ayers is coming forward to speak about his connection to Barack Obama.

Ayers claimed in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Ayers told anchor Chris Cuomo that he doesn't know Obama any better than "thousands of other Chicagoans" and that "a secret link" between the two men is a "myth."

I don't think Ayers has any notable connection to Obama. Two people knowing each other doesn't mean a thing. I was talking with a friend of mine who is a die hard Republican. I, clearly, am not. I told him it would be the same as if someone called him a Socialist simply because he has been to my house and we have had dinner together. That wouldn't be true and it wouldn't be fair.

I don't care about some mythical Ayers-Obama connection.

Some people have rushed to defend Ayers: "It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans"

Not exactly. Bill Ayers was never convicted of harming anyone. The organization he helped found, however, was far more militant that being simply anti-war.

The Weathermen was a radical organization that literally declared war against the United States in 1970. Their initial manifesto, entitled "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows", was signed by eleven inaugural members. One of which was William Ayers.

They felt that violence was not only necessary, but completely justified. Former member Naomi Jaffe claimed: "We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that I think is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life and go to your white job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there and you don't do anything about it, that's violence."

Former member Bernardine Dohrn claimed: "There's no way to be committed to non-violence in one of the most violent societies that history has ever created. I'm not committed to non-violence in any way." Dohrn and Ayers were married during the 1970's while underground and on the run from the police.

Some highlights of the Weathermen:

October 8, 1969, they blew up a statue in Chicago built to commemorate police casualties incurred in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. When it was rebuilt and unveiled in May 4, 1970, the Weathermen waited a few months and blew it up again on October 6, 1970.

On February 21, 1970 the home of New York State Supreme Court Justice Murtagh was attacked with Molotov cocktails. Murtagh was presiding over a trial of Black Panthers accused of plotting to bomb New York landmarks.

March 6, 1970 members Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins died when a bomb they were constructed exploded. The townhouse they were in was demolished. The New York Times reports that "members have said the explosives at the town house were intended for an officers' dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey and for Butler Library at Columbia University." Supposedly, "an F.B.I. report...noted that the young people had enough explosives on hand to level everything on both sides of the street."

In San Francisco in 1970, a pipe bomb killed one police officer and injured another. The action was attributed to the Weathermen.

Ayers himself admitted in his book Fugitive Days that he participated in a series of bombings: New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and The Pentagon in 1972. No one was killed in these blasts.

These were not merely civil rights and anti-war protesters.

The organization the radicals in the Weathermen broke away from, Students for a Democratic Society, was a civil rights and anti-war organization.

The Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, led rallies, marches, sit-ins and teach-ins. The SDS were part of the Columbia University protests of 1968. From April 23 until April 30, 1968, "leftist students took over Columbia University, NYC occupying five buildings on the campus before forcibly being removed by the police."

But they didn't throw Molotov cocktails. They didn't build bombs.

Abbie Hoffman was a civil rights advocate and anti-war activist. Hoffman was known for his deliberately comical and theatrical tactics. In 1967, he brought together roughly 50,000 protesters to attempt to levitate the Pentagon.

Also in 1967, Hoffman and some compatriots visited the New York Stock Exchange. While there, they threw handfuls of money down onto the trading floor from the gallery above. Watching the traders scramble to collect the money, they felt they were making a theatrical point about greed and capitalism.

Hoffman was one of the founding members of a highly theatrical and anti-authoritarian political party known as The Youth International Party (YIP) whose members were affectionately called Yippies. In 1968, they tried to run a pig for President. Unfortunately for the Yippies, Pigasus the Immortal didn't garner any electoral votes.

Hoffman was later one of The Chicago Seven.

But he never threw Molotov cocktails. He never built bombs.

There is a difference between a civil rights activist and someone who throws Molotov cocktails at the home of a judge. There is a difference between an anti-war activist and a bomb maker.

I don't think Ayers has any appreciable link to Obama and I don't think it is at all fair to paint Obama with the Ayers brush. Ayers himself is in no way responsible for any actions done under the Weathermen name except in those that he himself participated.

Whether or not you agree with the actions of the Weathermen, you have to admit that dismissing the actions of Ayers and the Weathermen as simply being civil rights activists and anti-war protesters is being less than honest. They were far more than that.