Ayers on Obama's 'colossal mistake'

FOX INTERVIEW | Rips Afghanistan troop buildup

Education professor Bill Ayers, a former Weather Underground radical activist whose friendship with Barack Obama caused headaches during his presidential campaign, criticized Obama on Monday for his decision to send an additional 17,000 troops into Afghanistan.

Ayers, who has faced tough questions on bombs his organization set to protest the Vietnam War, said of Obama's decision: "It's a mistake. It's a colossal mistake."

The unlikely venue for Ayers' comments was conservative firebrand Sean Hannity's show on the Fox News Channel. Hannity more than anyone else used Ayers to hammer Obama during the campaign.

But Hannity's more liberal former sparring partner, Alan Colmes, lined up the Ayers interview.

"And, you know, we've seen this happen before, Alan," Ayers told Colmes, according to a release from Fox.

"We've seen a hopeful presidency, Lyndon Johnson's presidency, burn up in the furnace of war. . . . I fear that this brilliant young man, this hopeful new administration, could easily burn their prospect of a great presidency in the war in Afghanistan or elsewhere," he said.

As he has before, Ayers declined to repent for his radical activism, though he has maintained that nothing he did directly took any lives, and he had no role in bombings that killed people.

"I don't regret anything I did to oppose the war. It was -- I did it to oppose the war. I don't regret it," Ayers said. "I don't look back on those things and regret them, but I'm willing to rethink them. And there are many things which I'm going to rethink."