The Republican National Committee isn’t happy about this anti-McCain ad:

On Monday, the RNC demanded that NBC, CNN and MSNBC stop airing the DNC-sponsored commercial, saying that it deliberately distorts McCain’s words.

At issue is McCain’s answer, in January, to a question about Bush’s theory that troops could be in Iraq for 50 years.

McCain said: “Maybe 100. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’d be fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.”

Democratic Party chief Howard Dean said “there’s nothing false” about the ad.

“We deliberately used John McCain’s words. This isn’t some ominous consultant’s voice from Washington. This is John McCain’s own words. And we’ve been very upfront about everything that he’s said.”

Ok, so the DNC technically used McCain’s own words - but they left out all that other stuff about Americans not being harmed, wounded, killed, etc. I’ve heard this sound bite before and hearing it again now reminds me of Obama’s “Bittergate” and McCain saying we’ve made “great progress” with the economy - all comments that were taken out of context, misconstrued or simply blown out of proportion.

In the age of sound bites, however, every candidate must watch what they say. This is a pretty harsh attack ad, and it’s only April - look for even more attack ads to come, as it’s a mighty long road to November.