On two occasions last week, John McCain attacked Barack Obama by making a campaign issue out of an interview last month in which a member of Hamas praised Obama. As Obama told Wolf Blitzer on Thursday, McCain's attack was a smear, intended to raise doubts about Obama's commitment to protecting America and its allies. The truth, as Obama said, is that there is no difference between the two candidates when it comes to policy towards Hamas.

This isn't the first time John McCain has inserted the words of foreign agents into the 2008 campaign. In late March, McCain actually used the words of Osama bin Laden to slam both Democratic candidates:

A few weeks back, when McCain first tested his Hamas gambit, Andrew Sullivan formulated a simple, powerful response to these types of attacks:

Honorable campaigns do not allow foreign agents, especially terrorist organizations, to insert themselves into American presidential politics. No respectable foreign governments do such a thing; and the gambits of al Qaeda, Hamas, or any other grouping to play one candidate against another should in general be ignored, not exploited.

Sullivan's answer is absolutely right. Debates about policy are fair game. But using the words of foreign terrorists as a political attack in a presidential campaign is completely unacceptable.

John McCain may be securing some political advantage -- but he's doing it at expense of dignifying terrorist organizations, something that no presidential candidate should ever be willing to do.

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