Democrats try to tie McCain to Bush on war

The Democratic National Committee unveiled a new Internet ad today that says that John McCain and President Bush have been in "lockstep" on the Iraq war since "day one."

Trying to tie the Republican nominee in waiting to the president's unpopular policy, the ad shows McCain making similar statements to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Bush, over the sound of soldiers marching.

"After Five Years, We Don't Need a Third Bush Term," it says on the screen at the close. "Bush & McCain: Wrong Then, Wrong Now."

The ad, however, does not mention that McCain broke with the Bush administration and was highly critical of Rumsfeld for not deploying enough troops after Saddam Hussein's fall and for not following a counterinsurgency strategy. He pushed the president for the so-called surge, which McCain and others say has quelled violence in Iraq.

UPDATE: The DNC is also trying to make hay out of McCain misspeaking by confusing Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. At one point, according to news accounts, he said that Iran was supplying weapons to al Qaeda, a Sunni group, as opposed to Shiite extremists.

"Just one day after meeting with senior Iraqi and military leaders, John McCain got the basic facts about the violence in Iraq wrong today," the DNC said.