Angry vet wages fight to get U.S. out of Iraq

NEW YORK — Jon Soltz has helped transform the debate on the Iraq war by channeling the raw anger and frustration of many Iraq veterans into a political campaign both sophisticated and visceral.

In the little more than a year since he launched VoteVets.org, the former Army captain and Iraq war veteran and his band of brothers have shaken the GOP's claim to be the pro-military party. They accuse Republicans of recklessly sending troops to war without the right equipment and failing to care for thousands of wounded and traumatized war veterans.

During the 2006 elections, VoteVets' attack ads featuring disillusioned veterans helped unseat Republicans in five states, including Virginia Sen. George Allen and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, giving Democrats an unexpected Senate majority.

Soltz, 30, and VoteVets this year have been a constant presence on Capitol Hill, where they have emboldened Democrats to push for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Soltz works closely with MoveOn.org, and influential military officers such as retired Gen. Wesley Clark. Soltz has become a hot item, sought out by the media, consulted by senior Democratic lawmakers and mobbed by anti-war activists.

He is a regular on MSNBC's "Hardball" and "Countdown," where he tangles with supporters of the war.

Last Monday, he flew from New York to Vancouver, Wash., to confront Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., about Baird's recent decision to support staying in Iraq as long as it takes to ensure stability.

"Ninety percent of our Army is not killing Osama bin Laden," he told Baird, according to The Columbian newspaper. "Adding 20,000 more troops to Iraq is like spitting in the ocean."

With a database of more than 40,000 supporters and donors, he is planning to take on GOP presidential candidates in 2008, targeting their claim that they are better guardians of national security.

"Jon Soltz seems to be exactly what progressives need," said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who worked on Sen. Bob Casey's successful 2006 campaign against Santorum. "He has a pair of fists, and he knows how to use them."

Soltz, home from Iraq for nearly four years, maintains the short hair and athletic build of a military officer and addresses strangers as "sir" and "ma'am." He discusses politics as if it were combat, speaking of the need to "fire rounds down range" and become the "lead elements of the battle."

He was a teenager when he decided on a military career; during a summer trip to Israel, he had become enamored of the Israeli army. At Washington & Jefferson College, a liberal-arts school near Pittsburgh, he became a ROTC cadet and went to Army airborne school at Fort Benning, Ga.

After college, he joined the Army's 1st Armored Division based in Germany. In 2000, he spent six months in Kosovo.

Soltz was preparing to leave active duty in 2003 when President Bush began assembling an invasion force to oust Saddam Hussein. Ordered to stay in the Army, he was thrilled. He was certain U.S. troops would uncover chemical-weapons stockpiles quickly and silence the invasion's critics.

"Iraq, I believed in it," he said.

On his first night in Iraq, in May 2003, an insurgent ambush rained rocket-propelled grenades on his unit. The attack did nothing to dim Soltz's zeal.

"It was a great day," he recalled.

But as the battalion settled into a logistics base south of Baghdad, the allure of the mission began to fade.

Despite Bush's announcement weeks earlier that major combat had ended, the unit's mostly unarmored trucks came under almost daily attack. As his battalion's transportation officer, Soltz was responsible for organizing convoys that ferried fuel and supplies to units in Baghdad.

"They were getting lit up," he said.

On June 22, 2003, a fuel convoy he had dispatched was ambushed in Baghdad. One of his comrades, riding in an unarmored truck, was killed.

As Soltz dwelt on the death, shock gave way to anger.

"These people aren't just like your friends," he said. "They're like your kids. You're responsible for their safety. And this kid died because he didn't have the right equipment."

Soltz returned to Germany in September 2003, shaken and exhausted. When he visited a comrade whose arm had been shattered by a roadside bomb, Soltz broke down. "I looked at this kid and thought, 'I hope this is all worth it,' " he said.

That winter, back home in Pittsburgh, Soltz decided to transfer to the Army Reserve and to work on a master's degree in international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. An encounter with a veteran from another era set him on a new course.

In spring 2004, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., made a presidential campaign stop in Pittsburgh. Soltz introduced himself, and the two men spoke briefly. Kerry later called Soltz at home.

"He said, 'I just want you to know that when I came home from Vietnam, I was angry like you, and that's OK,' " Soltz said. "Nobody in my life understood what was going on in my head at the time. Not my friends, not my family. But when someone like that says, 'I was like you, I understand your anger and your pain, do something with that,' that is speaking a language you can understand."

Soltz volunteered for the Kerry campaign, organizing outreach to Pennsylvania veterans. He later helped raise money for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans running for Congress. But he was frustrated by the inability of war critics to influence U.S. policy.

Soltz believed the war was damaging military readiness and undermining the fight against terrorism. He grew passionate about pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and into the hunt for al-Qaida leaders.

He and fellow vets founded VoteVets in early 2006. "From the get-go, he didn't want to be 'anti-war,' " said Ed Vick, a longtime Republican political consultant and Vietnam veteran who sits on the VoteVets board. "This would be a strictly pro-military, pro-soldier, pro-veteran organization."

Soltz also drew on the political lessons he learned in 2004, when Republican attack ads challenged Kerry's war record and combat medals.

"Every other old-school veterans organization wants to play nice guy. Well, playing nice guy didn't get us enough body armor in Iraq," Soltz said. "Playing nice guy got us escalation in Iraq."

VoteVets' breakthrough was a 30-second TV commercial, made with help from Democratic ad consultants, that linked several GOP lawmakers to inadequate body armor.

Soltz sent two vets to an Arizona gun range to illustrate the differences between the old armor troops were given and newer vests that could stop rounds from an assault rifle.

As the camera rolled, one of Soltz's comrades fired an AK-47 at two mannequins wearing the vests. He pulled each open to reveal the difference: four holes in the abdomen of the mannequin wearing the old body armor; none in the one with the new vest.

"Sen. George Allen voted against giving our troops this," Iraq veteran Peter Granato said, holding up the new vest in the ad that ran in Virginia. "Now it's time for us to vote against him."

Republicans accused VoteVets of distorting voting records. Allen and other GOP senators had opposed a 2003 amendment that would have increased funding for the National Guard and the Reserve but would not have allocated money for body armor.

"It was just another example of the many efforts that the Democrats have set up that play very loose with the facts," said Dick Wadhams, Allen's campaign manager.

VoteVets also was criticized by the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check for misleading advertising. Nonetheless, the ad became a sensation, thanks in part to exposure on YouTube.com.

Jim Gerstein, a Washington Democratic consultant, tested more than 100 campaign commercials with focus groups. The body-armor ad was the most effective of the 2006 congressional elections.

More ads followed.

In one, a wheelchair-bound veteran asks how Congress could accept a raise and vote to cut health-care benefits for veterans.

By the time the new Democratic majority took over in January, Soltz had decided to take his campaign to the Capitol.

On one of his first lobbying trips, Soltz and his comrades pressed lawmakers to oppose Bush's plan to send more troops to Baghdad. Instead, VoteVets wanted U.S. combat troops withdrawn from Iraq.

Soltz acknowledges he changed few minds. But he developed working relationships with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, who increasingly have looked to VoteVets to bolster their push for a withdrawal and to shield them from GOP rhetoric equating opposition to the war with selling out the troops.

Soltz was one of a handful of outsiders invited to address House Democrats at their annual retreat in February in Williamsburg, Va. He drew a standing ovation with a tearful appeal to lawmakers to help end the war.

VoteVets members since have stood with Democrats at news conferences concerning nearly every major vote challenging Bush's war strategy.

"They need to know we've got their backs," Soltz said.

Soltz smiled as he talked about his next project: the 2008 election.

"Our goal is to be the No. 1 player on the No. 1 issue facing the country," he said.