Using images of children in combat camouflage, a coalition of anti-war groups is airing about $500,000 in ads against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and three GOP colleagues facing re-election next year, urging them to "bring our troops home." The ads come as official Washington turns its attention to a series of assessments on progress in Iraq that will culminate with a report next week from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq. Sponsored by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, the ads also will target Republican Sens. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Susan Collins of Maine and Pete Domenici of New Mexico. The ads are scheduled to run for 10 days and will appear frequently on broadcast stations in the four senators' home states and nationally on cable.

The ads depict children in fatigues in a training camp as an announcer says: "How long will Republican senators keep us stuck in Iraq? Should we start training our children now?"

Other ads mention the targeted senators by name.

"Republican senators voted against bringing our troops home - six times," the ad states. "And voted to waste $450 billion dollars - not on education or health care - but on a needless religious civil war."

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart dismissed the ad as the work of "a left-wing elite that seems determined to lose this fight at any cost."

"To call the efforts of U.S. troops a waste is the height of disrespect to our brave men and women in uniform," he said. "The defeatist fringe groups who bankrolled this spin should apologize to every American family that has a loved one serving in Iraq. Nobody wants our troops to be in harm's way any longer than necessary to defeat the kind of people who killed thousands of innocent Americans on 9/11."

The ads mean the airwaves in those states will be saturated with competing messages on the war.

A group of former White House aides and Republican fundraisers are spending $15 million to advertise in those states and in others to keep lawmakers from wavering on President Bush's Iraq war strategy.

The anti-war ads are part of a campaign to spend $13 million through the end of September to pressure lawmakers to support a troop withdrawal, said Tom Matzzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org, a member of the anti-war coalition.