McCain 100 years ad

I got an email from Howard Dean this morning, (yeah, we exchange emails regularly) asking to raise money for an attack ad against McCain. I'm going to quote almost the entire email here, because I don't want anyone to think I'm over reacting to a sound byte.

Dear Peter,

John McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years. He's said it, and it's on tape.

But his campaign hates that he was caught. They've viciously attacked anyone who reminded the American people that he said it, including me. They've said that those who reference the 100 years comments are "deliberately misleading voters."

So we've taken John McCain's own words -- video of him saying that 100 years would be "fine with me" -- and made a TV ad. There's no confusion, no distortion, no misleading -- it's John McCain, on tape, for voters to judge on their own.

It's one of the most powerful political ads I've ever seen. It's devastating -- and the McCain campaign will spend the rest of the election trying to fight it.

I agree completely with McCain that this is “deliberately misleading” ad. It takes one sound byte and plays it repeatedly without context.

Here’s the ad along with a longer clip. I don’t think anyone can claim the ad is not misleading. The New York Times has a little bit of the back and forth over this ad.

This isn’t as stupid a distraction as the flag lapel issue, which I still can’t believe they actually used time in a debate to ask obama about. At least this is literally about the Iraq war, which is a real issue, but it’s such an over simplification that it prevents real debate.

POHS