Throwing stones from glass houses... McCain's Iran-Contra connections revealed

The Associated Press and other news organizations are reporting on links between Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, and an organization involved with the illegal gun and drug running, terrorist bombings, and subversion of the US Constitution that threatened to bring down the Reagan White House in the overlapping scandals of the so-called Iran-Contra affair.

The organization, the U.S. Council for World Freedom, which the AP describes as "an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America" that was " dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe" -- and, so, embraced by Republicans like John McCain, who USCWF founder and arms merchant, John Singlaub, says was more a "supporter" than an active member. But that would seem to be contraindicated by the facts: McCain served on the board of the Council.

"I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated," Singlaub told the AP.

McCain has subsequently claimed he resigned from the group in 1984 and asked to have his name removed from the group's letterhead in 1986 -- a contention denied by Singlaub and Joyce Downey, who oversaw the Council's day to day operations.

Renewed attention to McCain's membership on the board of the ultra-right wing, terrorist-connected organization comes in the wake of a series of McCain campaign attacks on Democratic rival Barack Obama's exceedingly tenuous connections to an aging University of Chicago professor, William Ayers, who, more than 40 years ago was a founding member of the leftist Weather Underground, whose members later took credit for several terror bombings.

At the time of the Weather Underground crimes, Obama was 8 years old. He has since strongly and unequivocally condemned the activities of the Underground and Ayers. But with McCain's continuing plummet in electoral polling, his advisers have been quoted by a number of sources as saying that if the McCain campaign does not "change the topic" from the current economic crisis they will lose the election.

Since almost every move by McCain, from his pick of pretty, but pretty vapid Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, to his disastrous and quickly reversed "campaign suspension" -- which was widely seen as a cheesy gimmick that unnecessarily politicized an already chaotic recovery plan being argued in Congress -- has been panned by all-important undecided voters, McCain was told he had no recourse but to pursue an ever-sharpening attempt at character assassination.

The Obama campaign had warned that they would fight fire with fire if the McCain campaign forced their hand and, along with a dredging up of the so-called Keating Five scandal that had previously been seen as one of the darkest blots on McCain's record, stories about McCain's very spotty record as a navy aviator have surfaced -- notably in the LA Times, which noted that McCain had three major aviation accidents in his military career and that two and possibly all three of those accidents appeared to have been due to his own reckless disregard for proper flying protocols; they go on to point out that McCain's account of at least one of those accidents in his autobiography was strongly contradicted by the Navy's own findings, which indicated that McCain was at fault, though he blamed the crash on an engine failure the Navy claimed simply did not happen.

And now McCain is being implicated in what has widely been seen (at least until the ever-unfolding scandals, mis- and malfeasance of the Bush administration) as the most serious scandal involving a seated US president since Watergate.

It just doesn't seem to get any better for John McCain.

Ever.