Fighting a spam fire with a DDoS

[Gerald Combs]

James Sissel wrote:
> But you aren't hitting the computers sending the spam.  This is not a
> way to prevent you from getting spam.  What you are hitting are the
> servers the spam wants you to visit to buy the latest male organ growth
> creme or whatever.  If we shut them down then the spammers won't have a
> product to spam us with.  We are attacking the ultimate source of the
> spam, not the spam itself.

Couldn't this be used as a cheap way to DDoS someone?  E.g. if I were
upset with the incompetent inventory control at my local hardware store,
could I send out a pile of spam linking to www.mylocalhardwarestore.com
and watch as their web site slows to a crawl?