Iraq veterans fight troop buildup

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A group of Iraq war veterans is launching a national TV ad campaign arguing that politicians who fail to oppose a troop buildup in Iraq “don’t support the troops.”

VoteVets.org, a political action fund that supported anti-war candidates in last fall’s election, is targeting Republican U.S. senators who have expressed concern over President Bush’s plan to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province – but who aren’t supporting a nonbinding Senate resolution opposing the buildup.

The group kicked off a nationwide tour Monday morning with a news conference in St. Paul, where they put pressure on Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, who voted against the resolution last week in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but also has said he opposes sending more troops to Baghdad.

“He has no problem saying he is against the escalation in Iraq,” said Jon Soltz, national chairman of VoteVets.org, and who served as a U.S. Army captain in Iraq from May to September 2003. “But he has not voted to oppose the escalation.”

The veterans group is holding events this week and next in states that have Republican senators in key positions on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, with stops scheduled in Indiana, Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is on the Armed Services Committee.

The group’s TV ad starts airing Thursday on CNN, and it also is airing state-level ads in Virginia, New Hampshire and Indiana aimed at Sens. John Warner, John Sununu, Judd Gregg and Richard Lugar.

The national ad features six Iraq combat veterans, arguing that the troop buildup goes against the wishes of “two-thirds of the American people, a bipartisan majority in Congress, the Iraq Study Group and veterans like us.”

It ends with Robert Loria, an Army veteran who lost his arm in an explosion in Baghdad in 2004. “If you support escalation, you don’t support the troops,” Loria says in the ad.

Coleman has said he supports a milder anti-buildup resolution sponsored by Warner and Collins, instead of the one passed last week in the Foreign Relations Committee with the votes of all of the committee’s Democrats and one Republican, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine had joined Hagel, and Democratic Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan in proposing last week’s resolution.

Coleman also has said while he doesn’t think more troops is the solution for Baghdad, he thinks a buildup in Anbar province still could be effective in quelling violence.

Lack of support from Coleman and other Republicans likely would mean that the full Senate won’t be able to muster the 60 votes needed to bring up the stronger anti-buildup resolution for a Senate floor vote.

Soltz said his group doesn’t support congressional action to cut off funding for the war, as some war opponents want. He said passage of the Senate resolution would be an incentive for the administration to return to the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which urged stronger diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and a gradual drawdown of the U.S. military presence.