• CNET News.com, Monday, April 23, 2007 10:45 AM

YouTube deleted and then restored a controversial video of 2008 Presidential hopeful John McCain's little improvisation about bombing Iran, to the tune of the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann." McCain was actually speaking to a live audience at a campaign stop in South Carolina. His little song went: "That old, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway." The audience laughed. McCain implied that bombing Iran, which is accused of aiding the Iraq insurgents, could be necessary to protect Israel.

YouTube said it deleted the video after the site's users flagged it. "We reviewed it, and it was mistakenly removed," a spokesman told CNET. "We have examined the situation and have since reinstated the video." The spokesman refused to comment on YouTube's protocol for dealing with video of politicians. For example, what procedures are in place to guard against supporters and employees flagging negative content about their candidate?

"It is time to draw a line in the sand and make clear that taking down political speech first and asking questions later is absolutely unacceptable behavior," said MoveOn.org director Adam Green in response to the McCain video deletion. CNET points out that this isn't the first time YouTube removed controversial political videos. Recently, an anti-Bush video poking fun at World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who's currently embroiled in a controversy over a hiring violation, was pulled. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in a complaint cited the removal of a parody of "The Colbert Report" from YouTube following a "baseless" copyright complaint.

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