another backfired smear

Former IRI President: McCain personally supported grants for mainstream Khalidi group.

Harper’s Ken Silverstein reports today that former International Republican Institute (IRI) President Bruce McColm revealed to him that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), as chairman of the IRI board, directly supported funding for Professor Rashid Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies in the early 1990s. McColm explained to Silverstein:

All our [grant] proposals had to be approved at board meetings with John McCain in attendance and in agreement. John did think highly of these grants. … Ironically, it was Khalidi’s academic background and his known coolness to the PLO that attracted our interest. How strange to see the McCain campaign use Khalidi as a “type of terrorist” with whom Obama hangs around.

Over the last week, the McCain campaign has attempted to smear Khalidi as a radical and link him to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

(Think Progress)
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Unfortunately, I know that McCain's uneducated supporters will never hear this news and only "know" that Obama was once in the same room with Khalidi, so Obama has to be the bad guy, not McCain!
Of course, Khalidi is not a radical so this is a non-story regardless, but it shows just how desperate McCain is...