WAUKESHA, Wis. GOP presidential candidate John McCain said Thursday that questions on Democratic rival Barack Obama's association with a former war protester linked to Vietnam-era bombings are part of a broader issue of honesty.

In his strongest personal criticism since his faltering campaign began casting Obama as an unknown, unacceptable candidate, McCain told backers Obama had not been truthful about his relationship with former radical Bill Ayers. The Arizona senator also said Obama himself has “a clear radical, far-left pro-abortion record.”

McCain and the Republican National Committee also launched new Web and TV ads about Obama and Ayers.

Loud cheers from 4,000 people at a sports complex near Milwaukee greeted McCain's attacks over Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground, a Vietnam protest group that bombed government buildings 40 years ago. Obama has pointed out he was a child then and first met Ayers and his wife, ex-radical Bernadine Dohrn, 25 years later.

“Look, we don't care about an old, washed-up terrorist and his wife,” McCain said. “That's not the point here.”

“He's a terrorist!” a man in the audience screamed.

“We need to know the full extent of the relationship,” McCain said. Later, he told ABC News: “It's a factor about Sen. Obama's candor and truthfulness with the American people.”

Obama has denounced Ayers, his violence and his views. He dismisses McCain's criticism as an effort to “score cheap political points.”

To press its argument, the McCain campaign also released a 90-second Web ad about Obama and Ayers.

“Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Friends. They've worked together for years,” the ad says. The ad also claimed one of the nonprofits on which Obama and Ayers worked was a radical education foundation.

That foundation was The Annenberg Challenge; it was funded by the Annenberg Foundation, a charity set up by longtime Republican backer and newspaper publisher Walter Annenberg. Annenberg has since died, but his wife has endorsed McCain. The city of Chicago gave Ayers its “Citizen of the Year” award in 1997 for work on this educational project.

Today, the Republican National Committee will start running a TV ad in Indiana and Wisconsin that links Obama to Ayers and other Chicago figures. “The Chicago Way. Shady politics. That's Barack Obama's training,” the ad says.