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A controversial, and powerful, campaign ad accusing U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl of voting against funding for body armor for soldiers in Iraq was released on the Internet video site YouTube Tuesday.

A Kyl spokesman branded the spot, which currently can only be seen on the Internet, as false and misleading.

The ad features Pete Granato, an Iraqi Operation Freedom veteran with the U.S. Army Reserves. Granato holds an AK-47, which he says is the "rifle of choice for terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Granato fires the weapon into two sets of military vests on mannequins — one a flak jacket, which Granato says is "the protection we were given when we were deployed to Iraq" and the other modern body-armor.

While the bullets are stopped by the body armor, they rip through the flak jacket.

"The difference is life or death," Granato says. The commercial ends with Granato saying Kyl voted against providing the troops with body armor.

The ad was funded by VoteVets.org, a political action committee made up of veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is one of several versions the group has made targeting Republican senators running for re-election this year.

Kyl is running for election against Democratic challenger Jim Pederson.

Although the ad is stirring, it has also been criticized for inaccuracies. Most notably, it cites a Senate amendment that called for $1 billion for "National Guard and Reserve equipment" that Kyl voted against in April 2003. The amendment never specifically mentioned body armor.

The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a University of Pennsylvania nonpartisan and nonprofit advocacy group for voters, criticized the ad on this point.

It also noted shortages of body armor were the result of supply problems, not a lack of funding, a point which government documents support.

Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran from Pittsburgh and chairman of VoteVets, defended the ad, saying body armor was part of the amendment's intent. A press release issued by the amendment's sponsor, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in 2003 cites body armor as equipment soldiers needed.

"I stand by the ad 110 percent," Soltz said.

The ad also cites an amendment to the $87 billion emergency war budget passed in October 2003. Kyl supported the war budget but voted against an amendment that would have allocated $322 million for "safety equipment." The amendment was tabled.

"We are the ones who had our friends get wounded or killed because of this, and we have a right to hold politicians accountable," Soltz said. "We have a right to ask these questions and demand accountability for our leaders. We are asking people to take a hard look at this."

The Kyl campaign has blasted the ad, emphasizing the supply issues with the armor.

"The charges are just simply false," said Andy Chasin, spokesman for Kyl's campaign. "Senator Kyl has always supported military-funding requests, and he's relied on the military to tell him what they need."

The ad has not aired on television here, and Chasin said Kyl's campaign was hoping to give it as little attention as possible.

However, Kyl may have inadvertently brought the ad more attention last week by meeting with the editorial boards of The Arizona Republic and East Valley Tribune, which subsequently ran editorials criticizing it before it was released.

"What we were trying to do was kill it before it even got here," Chasin said. "The ad is patently false, and it doesn't belong in the campaign."

The editorials prompted VoteVets to put the ad on the Internet, Soltz said. Until last week there were no plans to make the ad public.

"Our supporters vote on where they would like the ad to run," he said. "They haven't voted for Senator Kyl, but if he keeps this up he might be next on the list."

The ad's impact remains to be seen. Limited to the Internet, its audience is most likely nominal, said Fred Solop, a political-science professor at Northern Arizona University and director of the Social Research Lab, where he does polling.

However, the message is powerful enough it could resonate should it reach the airwaves, he said.

Mark Bergman, spokesman for the Pederson campaign, said the campaign has nothing to do with the ad but supports it.

He disagreed with the criticisms, saying the ad opened questions about Kyl's record on the war.