Not Supporting Cap & Trade = Supporting Terrorists?

A recent ad targeting opponents to last year's Clean Energy Act has drawn the ire of campaigns of those targeted.

Posted below is the ad from VoteVets.org, the political action committee composed of veterans from Iraq & Afghanistan generally opposed to further military action there as is, and their linking Missouri Congressman & GOP Senate candidate Roy Blunt to sympathizers of terrorism against American interests:


VoteVets.org also posted similar videos on YouTube attacking Wyoming's John Barrasso, Iowa's Chuck Grassley, Illinois's Mark Kirk, Kentucky's Mitch McConnell South Dakota's John Thune, and both of Indiana's senators, all of which were voiced by veterans from their respective states. With the exception of Dick Lugar, McConnell & Barrasso, all of VoteVets.org's targets are vying for the Senate this November.

At issue is Republican opposition to HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House last July and is awaiting debate in the Senate.

Already the spot has drawn criticism from Blunt's son Matt. The former governor tweeted disgust that his dad's picture was superimposed over footage from the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole.

"Recently saw the offensive ad by [Robin] Carnahan supporters claiming my dad @Roy Blunt supports terrorists. Very offensive," Matt Blunt wrote. "It's one thing to use images to remind ourselves that we have enemies. It's another to use them to claim an American supports terrorists.

"The idea that opposition to cap & trade (a big tax most Missourians oppose) equals support for terrorists is as ludicrous as it is offensive."

Of course, VoteVets.org's ads (which, excepting Indiana and Wyoming, has an identical script) do not explicitly mention "cap-and-trade", opting to instead focus on the importation of foreign oil. And they happen to highlight countries on the background map (Egypt, Kuwait, and Lebanon) which don't appear on the list, which is identical throughout the ads. Given that it's a 30-second spot, chances are the list & map highlights are largely arbitrary.

And worse for the PAC: Mark Kirk was among eight Republicans that voted in favor of HR 2454, the eight bi-partisan votes needed to ensure the bill's narrow 219-212 passage in the House. None of the ads cited the roll call (in the case of Kirk and Blunt) or where they derived the current senators' opposition to the bill.

This comes two weeks after a certain terrorist on the FBI's Most Wanted list decided to weigh in on climate change. Last month, Osama bin Laden himself declared that global warming would be less of a problem if people stopped doing business with American companies, and dumped the dollar altogether. Now it seems that opposing cap & trade would help him too.

As important as it is to ensure a clean environment and attempt to ensure a self-sufficient and renewable energy supply, it would be helpful to not resort to invoking the War on Terror to get a point across, and better yet to not do it as sloppily and cookie-cutter as this is playing out.