I received an e-mail from Howard Dean concerning John McCain’s now infamous “100 years” statement. The e-mail reads:

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./

So, what does the ad show? a small fraction of the entire quote:

QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years..

McCAIN: Maybe a hundred….That’d be fine with me.

The audio is then followed by a shot of two soldiers being blown up. Just for fun, lets look at the full quote:

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

So, Mr. Dean. Let me get this straight. Taking of 8 words out of an 88 word response, splicing them together, while dropping the remainder of the sentence, and tacking on video of a soldier being injured (which was addressed in the original answer) isn’t misleading? Okay, lets try the shoe on the other foot.

Original quote from Obama’s “monumental” speech on race:

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man….Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans“.

Okay, now lets see what our non-misleading spliced, out of reference quote looks like next to some clearly appropriate pictures: