A dozen Iowa supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama are accusing GOP candidate John McCain of airing "distortions" and "outright lies" in a McCain campaign ad that’s being broadcast in Iowa.
Obama backer Ray Hutchinson of Urbandale served in Vietnam from December of 1967 to December of ’68. "Senator McCain is a war hero and I respect that….I respect his service to this country," Hutchinson says, "but for Senator McCain to suggest Barack Obama does not support our troops is dishonest."
Ken Choquette of Des Moines was working for the Army as an independent contractor in Afghanistan when the U.S. invaded Iraq, and Choquette says he saw a diversion of resources to what he feels is an "unnecessary" war in Iraq. "I feel pretty (strongly) about this because after the Peace Corps in the 1960s I was drafted and sent to Vietnam in the medical corps and I was responsible for putting a lot of our 56,000 GIs in rubber bags," Choquette says, "and when you do that, day in and day out, you have some second thoughts about this."
Attorney General Tom Miller says the McCain ad about Iraq and another McCain ad which blames Obama for gas prices are "ridiculous."
"All of us hoped that it would be a more positive kind of campaign, that it wouldn’t slip into the negative, deceptive, false ads," Miller says.
Dick Meyers of Iowa City served eight years in the Army and he calls the ad business as usual from Republicans. "I honestly believe that this will be a campaign led by the folks on the other side to distort (Obama’s) positions over and over again," Meyers says. "We saw it in the last election. In fact, we saw it in the last two presidential elections."
Meyers and other Obama backers spoke this morning at a news conference at Obama’s Iowa campaign headquarters in Des Moines. McCain backers who are veterans intend to hold a statehouse news conference at 1:30 this afternoon at the statehouse.