Howard Dean sent the following email to his mailing list yesterday:

Dear Friend,

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.

In addition to the McCain clip, this nasty advertisement features a clip of … American soldiers being killed by an IED.

Yes, that’s right. The Democratic Party is using images of US troops being attacked by terrorists to make political points against John McCain.

It’s “devastating,” all right. But not to John McCain.

Those are someone’s husbands, someone’s brothers, someone’s sons that you see being blown up in that video. I wonder how their families would feel about their loved ones being used for political gain in such a callous, unfeeling, cynical way?

UPDATE at 4/29/08 8:40:17 am:

Even more unbelievably, the IED clip comes from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s at about 1:35 in this trailer: Fahrenheit 9/11 trailers. (Hat tip: MacGregor.)

UPDATE at 4/29/08 9:10:07 am:

And that’s not even the only reason this ad is beyond the pale; the entire ad is based on “a rank falsehood,” according to FactCheck.org:

The DNC’s message portrays McCain as bent on fighting an “endless” war in Iraq.

DNC: We can’t afford four more years with a President who fights an endless war in Iraq. … On the war, McCain scoffed at Bush’s call to leave troops in Iraq for 50 years, saying “Make it a hundred!”

That of course is a serious distortion of what McCain actually said to a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire back on Jan. 3. His actual words are posted in a video on YouTube. Far from advocating “endless war,” he said the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq would be “fine with me” provided that they’re not being killed or wounded. Here’s the full quote:

McCain, Jan. 3: Make it a hundred. … We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as American, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. It’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day.

It should be noted that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, despite their frequent talk of withdrawing from Iraq, have said repeatedly that they would maintain at least some troops in a combat role in Iraq for some time, possibly their entire term of office.

There’s little doubt that McCain is less eager than either Clinton or Obama to bring troops home without further suppression of insurgent attacks. But it’s a rank falsehood for the DNC to accuse McCain of wanting to wage “endless war” based on his support for a presence in Iraq something like the U.S. role in South Korea.

UPDATE at 4/29/08 9:35:07 am:

Confederate Yankee has still images of the clip: The DNC IED.

UPDATE at 4/29/08 9:48:10 am:

Ace thinks the soldiers in the clip may not have been killed by the blast. I changed the title to “blown up,” since there’s some doubt about whether anyone died in that actual incident.

But this detail is almost completely beside the point. 99.9% of the people who see this ad have no way of knowing that soldiers weren’t killed (if they weren’t). Immediately after the IED clip, the video fades and cuts to the aftermath of a car bomb explosion; it’s very clearly intended to make viewers think soldiers were killed.

And I don’t think it makes it much better if the soldiers were “only” wounded.

UPDATE at 4/29/08 10:04:32 am:

More from Michelle Malkin: Question of the day: Where did the DNC get its IED footage? Update: The answer, partially.

UPDATE at 4/29/08 10:14:28 am:

Here’s the Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer, with the clip included in the DNC ad. It’s at about 1:35 into the video:

I love the big green LGF at the start of this trailer.