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AFL-CIO's Union Veterans Council released its first ad today, "Not Now," which will begin running tomorrow in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

"Every vet respects John McCain's war record. It's his record in the Senate that I have a problem with," Vietnam Veteran Jim Wasser says in the spot. "He wants us to keep spending $10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, just like Bush. That's money we could use to build schools and roads and create needed jobs here at home."

Adds Wasser: "He even took sides with Bush against increasing healthcare benefits for veterans. People should let John McCain know his agenda is not what we need, not now."

As CBS News Chief Political Consultant Marc Ambinder points out, the strategy of the AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Barack Obama, appears to be to link veterans' issues with economic anxieties. "We’re running the ad in towns where good jobs have disappeared because of flawed economic policies and failure to invest in jobs – places where the current economic slowdown is particularly acute," a spokesman said.

Watch it:

The group known as the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, which came to prominence for bankrolling ads four years ago suggesting that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had lied about his military service, is back in the news this week.

On Monday, Col. Bud Day, one of the more prominent members of the group, served as an advocate for John McCain as part of the presumptive GOP nominee's newly-instituted "Truth Squad," which is "aimed at countering the recent attacks on John McCain’s military record."

Responding to General Wesley Clark's comments on whether McCain's military experience prepares him to be President, Day said on a conference call that he is "well aware of what the commencement of these kind of personal attacks can lead to," having worked on McCain's behalf in 2000.

Now USA Today reports that McCain "has accepted nearly $70,000 for his presidential campaign from the top donors of the group" and their relatives.

Notes the newspaper: "That's nearly four times the amount McCain received from those donors in the 14 years before launching his current campaign at the end of 2006, campaign finance records show."

McCain condemned the group's ads criticizing Kerry when they came out during the 2004 campaign, calling them "dishonest and dishonorable."

A McCain spokesman told the newspaper that McCain accepted the donations because the donors are "interested in supporting (his) agenda of reform, prosperity and peace."

From CBS News' Scott Conroy, on the campaign trail with Mitt Romney:

During a Veterans Day appearance in Manchester, N.H., Mitt Romney recalled the day he received a call that a Massachusetts serviceman had been killed overseas. As governor, Romney attended more than 40 funerals or wakes of fallen servicemen, according to campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom, but this particular day provided an especially poignant moment.

Romney remembered standing on the tarmac at Logan Airport with National Guard leaders and family members, as the coffin came out of the baggage compartment of a US Airways jet.

“I put my hand on my heart as did the military officers who stood with a salute,” Romney said. “And as I choked back my emotions, I happened to look back into the airport terminal there at US Air and against all the windows there, the people that had come off that flight and others had stopped and they too had their hands on their hearts.”

This morning in Sioux City, Iowa, CBS News asked Romney whether, as president, he would move to lift the ban on media coverage of casualty transfers at U.S. military bases.

“You know, I haven’t been told the reasons for that policy — I’ve never really considered that policy,” Romney said.

He then offered a more personal response.

“I don’t see any particular reason to have that policy, but I haven’t really heard both sides of it. I tend to want to hear both sides before I make a policy pronouncement so I’m probably going to have to take a look at that. But I certainly didn’t object to the fact that people there at the airport terminal for instance could have taken a picture. I don’t find that offensive.”