With his decision to embrace an independent super PAC last week, President Obama issued a plea for deep-pocketed allies to help his campaign fight back against Republican rivals in the increasingly expensive and sophisticated arena of television attack ads.

Now, the Obama campaign is putting out a call for its grass-roots network to join the battle for free.

Today, the president’s re-election team will unveil three websites dedicated to providing supporters with information on the president’s record – and more than a little dirt on his Republican rivals. The campaign has named it Obama’s “Truth Team,” and the goal is to arm millions of surrogates with the facts, figures and talking points they need to engage in ground-level political combat – on their Twitter and Facebook feeds and in old-fashioned conversations with friends and neighbors.

“We believe that our grass-roots supporters persuading their networks to support the president will provide us with the decisive edge in November,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. “We’re providing them with the tools they need to amplify the president’s record, fact-check the Republicans’ attacks and prevent the Republicans from rewriting the history of their records.”

The strategy reflects a dispiriting acknowledgment by the Obama campaign that his 2012 re-election bid promises to be as ugly and bruising as his 2008 insurgent effort was uplifting – and the war must be waged at even the day-to-day, microlevel.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman cast the approach as a way for ordinary Americans to level the playing field in the face of the glossy television ads funded by super PACs that are raising tens of millions for Republican candidates.

Of the three Truth Team portals, just one, KeepingHisWord.com, could be described as positive in tone, listing Obama’s accomplishments.

The other two sites are far more negative. AttackWatch.com aims to rebut political attacks against Obama.

The third Web site, KeepingGOPHonest.com, allows Obama supporters to play offense. A sample page ridicules Romney’s comment during a Republican primary debate in South Carolina that he has lived on the “real streets of America” and lists his connections to Washington lobbyists.

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney, accused the president’s campaign of practicing a politics of “personal destruction.”