Had enough for one day? DeWine campaign ad doctors 9/11 footage.

Unbelievable. After a day of non-stop whoring by Congressional Republicans, this is the capper. You might recall a Bush campaign ad from 2004 in which Fearless Leader was addressing a group of photoshopped soldiers. Two years later, Ohio Republican Mike DeWine is airing a "dramatization" of 9/11 in one of his ads. We've all been asking ourselves "Where's the outrage?" for years now, but seriously... where is it?

The controversial video of the burning World Trade Center towers in a television campaign ad for Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine is doctored, U.S. News has learned. The television spot, which has been lambasted by critics as a political exploitation of the Sept. 11, attacks Democrat challenger Rep. Sherrod Brown for being weak on national security.

On the air in major Ohio markets since last Friday, the ad shows the towers, with the south building billowing smoke, which gradually drifts upward. In the video, the north tower, which was struck first on September 11, is undamaged.

"This particular image is impossible," says W. Gene Corley, a stuctural engineer who led FEMA's building performance study on the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks. Corley reviewed the ad atwww.brownvotes.com for U.S. News. "The north tower was hit first [so] the south tower could not be burning without the North Tower burning." Corley also says, "the smoke is all wrong." The day of the attacks, the plumes of ash were drifting to the southeast. "The smoke on 9/11 was never in a halo like that," Corley says.

DeWine's office acknowledged the error. "The Senator was unaware that the image of the towers was a graphic representation and has instructed the campaign to replace the footage with a picture of the Twin Towers," his office said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

Both Bush and DeWine's ads have been blamed on overzealous staffers. Because it's really just one guy that puts it all together. And when they say "I approved this message," they only mean "My approval of this message should not be construed as an admission of responsibility for any falsehoods or misleading material contained herein."

UPDATE: How could I have forgotten? Republican would-be Representative Howard Kaloogian also blamed an overzealous staffer (then his own ultra-secret, super-authentic ties to the US military) after posting to his campaign web site photos that proved-- PROVED!-- the progress that was being made in Iraq. The scenes were of an ordinary, everyday sorta city where people were going peacefully about their business, enjoying the benefits of life in a city definitely not ravaged by violence and religious killings. In Turkey.