a fraudulent basis." He maintained that an end to the war could be effected by a bill passed in the House and a Senate filibuster on such a bill defeated by a daily vote on cloture, but that the will to do so was lacking. Further, he suggested a bill requiring the president to withdraw from Iraq on pain of criminal penalties. He said the recent threat of a pre-emptive nuclear strike in the "war on terror" was immoral and would be dropped under a Gravel administration, and that America has no important military enemies and it is the influence of the military-industrial complex that has conditioned Americans to think of the world in terms of enemies. He characterized the CIA overthrow of democracy in Iran in the 1950s lies as the root of U.S. problems with that country. Overall, he said that all American armed forces who died in Vietnam died in vain and American armed forces in Iraq were dying in vain. Regarding his fellow candidates, he said, "I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me — they frighten me." Media stories about the debate said that Gravel was responsible for much of whatever "heat" and "flashpoints" had taken place. Gravel gained considerable publicity by shaking up the normally staid multiple-candidate format; The New York Times' media critic said that what Gravel had done was "steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements." The Internet was a benefit: a YouTube video of his responses in the debate was viewed more than 225,892 times, ranking seventeenth in most views for week and first among news and politics clips; his name became the fifteenth most searched-for in the blogosphere; and his website garnered more traffic than those of frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Gravel appeared on the popular Colbert Report on television on May 2, and his campaign and career were profiled in national publications such as Salon. All of this did not help his poll ratings: a May 2007 CNN poll showed him with less than 0.5 percent support among Democrats. In late May 2007, two wordless, avant-garde campaign videos, "Rock" and "Fire", created by Otis College of Art and Design staff Matt Mayes and Guston Sondin-Klausner, were released on YouTube and became hits. The first, nearly three minutes long, showed Gravel staring at the camera silently for more