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 Type the characters you see in the picture above. ||||| As the 2012 presidential campaign heats up, President Obama’s campaign team has set up a new Web site, AttackWatch.com, to challenge negative statements about the president made by Republican presidential candidates and conservatives. 
 
 Obama for America national field director Jeremy Bird told ABC News that the site’s goal is to offer “resources to fight back” against attacks. Mostly, that means fact checking statements from the likes of GOP presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and conservative commentator Glenn Beck and offering evidence to the contrary. The site is designed in bold red and black colors, and uses statements like “support the truth” and “fight the smears.” 
 
 The response to the site has been less than stellar. 
 
 
 
 (Image via Twitter) 
 
 “There's a new Twitter account making President Obama look like a creepy, authoritarian nutjob,” an Arizonan tweeted. “In less than 24 hours, Attack Watch has become the biggest campaign joke in modern history,” a contributor to conservative blog The Right Sphere wrote. The contributor linked to the following parody commercial for Attack Watch: 
 
 Tommy Christopher of Mediaite noted sarcastically of the site, “Great. Sounds like a terrific content-generating resource for right-wing bloggers, too. Everybody wins!” 
 
 While the initiative is reminiscent of a similar online effort launched during the 2008 campaign, called Fight the Smears, the intimidating design and language of the new site seems to be what’s causing a bigger ruckus. 
 
 Fight the Smears looked and felt far less scary, quoting Obama at the top of its page in a classic hope-change statement: “What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon — that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge but enemies to demonize.” 
 
 Attack Watch, on the other hand, uses the shorter tag­line, “Get the Truth. Fight the Smears.” 
 
 It’s safe to say that in its 24 hours of existence, Attack Watch has already backfired, becoming a tool for conservatives to use against Obama 2012. A tweet by conservative author Brad Thor summed up the critics’s argument: “Wow, not only are Obama & Co. incredibly thin-skinned, they're paranoid.” 
 
 
 
 Update, Wednesday, 5:11 p.m. 
 
 Obama 2012’s press office just returned an earlier request for comment. According to deputy press secretary Katie Hogan, 100,000 people signed up for the site in the first 24 hours. 
 
 “This site is a tool providing our supporters with the facts they need to fight back against lies and distortions about the President’s record,” Hogan said. 
 
 Read responses from readers here. 
 
 Read more on Obama’s reelection prospects: 
 
 Politics: As job growth stagnates, Obama’s reelection hopes may rest on painting opponent as even worse 
 
 Business: Economic news is bad for Obama’s reelection bid 
 
 2Chambers: McConnell: Obama speech ‘isn’t a jobs plan; it’s a reelection plan’ 
 
 Opinion: Why Obama faces an uphill run for reelection 
 
 The Fix: The New York special election: Will Democrats panic? ||||| By Michelle Malkin • September 14, 2011 12:15 PM 
 
 This is simply brilliant. 
 
 Ezra Dulis and Misfit Politics with Brandon Morse cranked out a quick, hilarious rejoinder to Obama’s 4th Brigade of Snitch. 
 
 
 
 Humor is always the best revenge. 
 
 Watch Attaaaaack Waaaaaatch. YouTube gold: 
 
 The Obama 4th BoS will never live this down. 
 
 *** 
 
 More Attaaaack Waaaaatch fail via The Hill: 
 
 A new Twitter hashtag designed to help fight misinformation against President Obama appears to have backfired in early use on Wednesday. …The hashtag was already in heavy rotation by Twitter users by Wednesday morning, but many users are conservatives such as columnist Michelle Malkin, who offered up her own daily column as an example of an Obama “attack.” The website is meant to be “the first line of defense against a barrage of misinformation,” according to an email from Obama’s campaign manager announcing the launch on Tuesday. 
 
 More on Obama’s laaaaaaughingstock: 
 
 Obama for America national field director Jeremy Bird told ABC News that the site’s goal is to offer “resources to fight back” against attacks. Mostly, that means fact checking statements from the likes of GOP presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Perry and conservative commentator Glenn Beck and offering evidence to the contrary. The site is designed in bold red and black colors, and uses statements like “support the truth” and “fight the smears.” The response to the site has been less than stellar. On Twitter, where the Web site has an account to help Obama supporters submit evidence of “attacks” on the president using the hashtag #attackwatch, nearly every tweet about the site has ridiculed it. “There’s a new Twitter account making President Obama look like a creepy, authoritarian nutjob,” an Arizonan tweeted. “In less than 24 hours, Attack Watch has become the biggest campaign joke in modern history,” a contributor to conservative blog The Right Sphere wrote. 
 
 Commenter Fuzzy: “Notice how WAPO’s article on this, “Attack Watch, new Obama campaign site to ‘fight smears,’ becomes laughing stock of the Internet” is NOW called “Attack Watch, new Obama campaign site to ‘fight smears,” becomes laughing stock OF CONSERVATIVES”? Gee, I wonder what happened there? Luckily, we all have the original title screen grabbed, tweeted, and/or in our readers.” 
 
 *** 
 
 Update: Readers and friends are sending their Attack Watch poster designs. Obama can finally claim success — the Hilarity Stimulus is working! 
 
 From reader Mike Peterson: 
 
 From Zombie at PJM: 
 
 Disqus ||||| Yesterday, ABC News’ Devin Dwyer reported on the Obama campaign’s “Attack Watch,” a present-day incarnation of his 2008 campaign’s “Fight the Smears” website. 
 
 ABC News has fought smears against any number of politicians, including those falsehoods spread to drum up opposition to Mr. Obama for various reasons — racist, ideological, political, or whatever. There was the madrassa junk. The birth certificate canard . The Obama-wants-to-indoctrinate-your-children silliness . And on and on. 
 
 That said, political campaigns do not generally provide reliable anchors at the Fact Check desk. And in one of its first postings, the “Attack Watch” website shows why. 
 
 The category: “Israel and Middle East Falsehoods.” 
 
 The attackers: “Mitt Romney alleged that President Obama has ‘thrown Israel under the bus’…Rick Perry accused the President of ‘thumbing his nose at traditional allies like Israel.’” 
 
 The Obama campaign assertion: “President Obama is a friend to Israel, despite unfounded claims to the contrary.” 
 
 There are certainly those in the pro-Israel community who agree with Romney and Perry. (And, yes, those who disagree.) 
 
 President Obama has publicly broken with the current prime minister of Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over a narrow set of issues. And Romney and Perry were using raw campaign rhetoric to criticize these tensions that have emerged. 
 
 What they claimed is subjective. They disagree with how President Obama has dealt with Israel, and I don’t doubt that they would have handled relations at least somewhat differently, probably more like President George W. Bush. 
 
 Better? Worse? That’s for others to decide. 
 
 When it comes to U.S.-Israel relations, it’s all really a matter of nuance. Look at the context. No American president in recent memory has been remotely “anti-Israel” in any real sense while in office. 
 
 A good precedent might be President George H.W. Bush, whom in 1992 the Jerusalem Post referred to as having an “anti-Israel image.” 
 
 Why? 
 
 Policy-wise: Because he had attempted to link $10 billion loan guarantees to Israel to an agreement to stop building settlements in Palestinian territories. Diplomacy-wise, the elder Bush complained about the strength of the pro-Israel lobby, publicly stated that the U.S. gives “Israel the equivalent of $1,000 for every Israeli citizen.” And of course Bush adviser James Baker, was reported to have said “F— the Jews” since they “didn’t vote for us anyway.” (He denied having said it.) Bush Sr. found himself not only labeled “anti-Israel” but “anti-semitic.” 
 
 Obama has done nothing even remotely like what Bush Sr. did, but the larger point is that as a matter of policy and diplomacy, judged as a whole, the U.S. government during the Bush Sr. Administration was still very supportive of Israel. It’s all a matter of degree and gradation. And it’s also a matter of who’s ruling Israel at any given moment. Netanyahu is essentially an Israeli version of a Republican; of course there are going to be tensions. President Obama can have a problem with Netanyahu and Israeli government policies and not have a problem with Israel. 
 
 But as to Romney and Perry’s criticisms: some people are always going to assert that unless an American president responds positively to every initiative of an Israeli prime minister, he’s not pro-Israel. 
 
 So is what Perry and Romney said a smear? Or an opinion? I don’t see how it can be considered a “smear.” 
 
 Some Democrats objected to the president’s remarks about Israel’s 1967 borders. Were they smearing the president? Netanyahu’s office took issue with the president’s remarks . Were they smearing him? 
 
 What’s odder still is how the Obama campaign’s “Attack Watch” disputes these “smears.” 
 
 The website quotes Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak saying he “can hardly remember a better period of support” and President of Israel Shimon Peres calling President Obama “a friend of the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” saying “I don’t have any doubt about it.” 
 
 Right, of course allies are going to praise the president and extol the relationship. That’s what allies do. And neither Romney nor Perry were saying the president hates Israel or doesn’t consider the Jewish state an ally – they were criticizing how the president has handled some diplomacy with Israel. 
 
 Odder still, the website’s citation of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testifying “that more has been done to improve the U.S.-Israel security relationship under President Obama than at any time in his 45-year career.” 
 
 Earlier this month, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported that, “In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security — access to top- quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing — and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process. Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis met with no resistance from other members of the committee.” 
 
 The “Attack Watch”-er at the Obama campaign isn’t seeking to understand the complicated Obama-Netanyahu relationship, or the disagreements Romney and Perry might have not only with Obama but with Gates. 
 
 He or she didn’t seem to be elucidating. (As in, for instance, what is the Obama administration argument: most American Jews think Israel needs to end the dispute with the Palestinians, the demographics are not in Israel’s favor, the president thinks the most pro-Israel thing he can do is to push Netanyahu back to the negotiating table.) 
 
 In short, the “Attack Watch”-er wasn’t trying to stop smears, he or she was seeking to stop criticism. The quality of the criticism may be another matter entirely. 
 
 (This is not a new problem for the Obama Smear Squad, they have a tendency towards over-reach. See HERE from April 2008.) 
 
 -Jake Tapper ||||| What’s one of the top-trending Twitter hashtags in the nation today? Its’ #attackwatch, where scores of tweets each minute are lampooning President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign for encouraging supporters to report anti-Obama claims via a new website, AttackWatch.com. 
 
 The site, set up this week by Obama for America, encourages users to report opponents, news outlets, even rumormongers making dubious claims about the president’s positions and policy, so the campaign can debunk them. The president’s own @BarackObama twitter feed calls @attackwatch “a new way to track and respond to attacks against President Obama.” 
 
 The website is rendered in stark red and black, with the tagline “Get the Facts. Fight the Smears.” It currently bears the headlines: “Rick Perry’s massive jobs lie;” “Romney’s job chart shows flawed understanding of the facts;” and “Glenn Beck Twists the Facts on Israel.” A menu allows users to “Report an Attack,” view “Attack Files,” and “Support the Truth,” which means contribute to the campaign. 
 
 The site encourages users to post to Twitter under the hashtag #attackwatch–and that’s where the trouble started. The president’s, or the website’s detractors—including some well-known conservatives—are using the hashtag to ridicule the site as “authoritarian,” “paranoid,” and “#gestapo.” Others have just had a lot of fun with the idea of ratting out fellow citizens for saying or doing silly things. Among the tweets: 
 
 @thorninaz I saw someone purposely squeeze the Charmin in the grocery store 
 
 @gregmcrc…check this=9% unemployment, no green jobs, 49 million uninsured, 1 in 6 Americans in poverty 
 
 @Drill_Thrawl Hey Kids, are mommy and daddy talking bad about Obama? Be sure to report them at #attackwatch #1984 
 
 @jacarterlaw please be advised that I just failed to recycle my sugary drink can, cut down a tree, bought a gun, and recited the pledge’ 
 
 And this: @JLMandl I’m still using REAL LIGHT BULBS. Come get me!
– President Obama’s campaign has set up a new take on its old “Fight the Smears” concept… only this time it’s a lot less friendly looking. Gone is the white-and-blue motif, replaced with an ominous red-and-black site called "Attack Watch"—and conservatives appear to find it hilarious. Seemingly every tweet using the suggested #attackwatch tag has been a conservative either mocking the site, or decrying it as a scary Big Brother exercise, the Wall Street Journal reports, offering examples: “@thorninaz I saw someone purposely squeeze the Charmin in the grocery store” “@Drill_Thrawl Hey Kids, are mommy and daddy talking bad about Obama? Be sure to report them at #attackwatch #1984" “@JLMandl I’m still using REAL LIGHT BULBS. Come get me!” The Washington Post even posted an article calling the site a “laughing stock,” to the delight of conservatives like Michelle Malkin, who posted some mock Attack Watch posters on her blog. A parody commercial (see video) is also making the rounds. The sight has also garnered serious criticism from Jack Tapper of ABC, who says it appears to be “seeking to stop criticism,” not smears. Still the site is something of a hit—Obama 2012 boasts that 100,000 people signed up in its first 24 hours.