Weather Underground Founder Chimes in on Tucson Shootings

First of all, the fact that the Washington Post would give the Weather Underground's Mark Rudd a platform to give his take on Jared Loughner says a lot about them. The good news is, Rudd's writing says a lot about him too. Rudd was the member of the terrorist group that signed on the bombing that was to take place at an officers dance on the Fort Dix, NJ Army base in 1970. Fortunately, that bombing didn't happen because it exploded in the Greenwich Village town house where it was being assembled, killing three Weathermen.

Anyway, via the Washington Post:

I considered myself an agent of necessity in a political revolution. I'm not sure if Loughner, who seems to suffer from mental illness, can be considered an agent of anything. But I'm sure that if, as alleged, he pulled the trigger, he had convinced himself that he was doing what needed to be done.

At his age, I had thought myself into a similar corner. My willingness to endorse and engage in violence had something to do with an exaggerated sense of my own importance. I wanted to prove myself as a man - a motive exploited by all armies and terrorist groups. I wanted to be a true revolutionary like my guerrilla hero, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. I wanted the chant we used at demonstrations defending the Black Panthers to be more than just words: "The revolution has come/Time to pick up the gun!"

A little further, Rudd talks about the bombing at the Greenwich Village town house...

On March 6, 1970, the Weather Underground's bombs, assembled in a New York townhouse, exploded prematurely. Ted Gold, Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins - three brilliant and passionate young people who had decided that they must become terrorists - were killed. Only by their deaths was the greater tragedy we were plotting avoided. Emotionally shattered, I dropped out of the Weather Underground but remained a fugitive until 1977.

Kinda says it all, doesn't it? Three would be mass murderers were "brilliant" and "passionate" in the mind of Mark Rudd.

Read it all, if you can.