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December 09, 2007 Anti-War General Flip Flops on the Surge Rick Moran One of the Iraq War's harshest military critics, retired General John Batiste, has changed his mind and come out in support of the new counterinsurgency strategy. In a joint Op-Ed in the Washington Post with Pete Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom, Batiste, who was a board member of the anti-war group Votevets.org, gives some of his reasons for the change of heart: First, the United States must be successful in the fight against worldwide Islamic extremism. We have seen this ruthless enemy firsthand, and its global...

The leading Washington coalition for ending the war in Iraq has lost its highest-profile Iraq veteran. John Bruhns, a former Army  sergeant who participated in the 2003 invasion, left his position as legislative representative of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) at the beginning of October. He had started in May, but quickly became frustrated with the group’s lack of legislative success as well as some of its tactics. He was part of AAEI’s “Iraq summer” campaign, which launched in August and was designed to get as many as 50 Republicans to break with Bush on the war. Only one...

An anti-war group consisting of veterans from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is launching an ad Tuesday that attacks popular conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The group, VoteVets.org, is spending $60,000 on the ad, which will air on Fox News and CNN. In addition, a radio version of the ad will run during Limbaugh’s show in Washington, D.C., and Palm Beach, Fla., the group said. At issue is Limbaugh’s controversial “phony soldiers” remark that was made during a broadcast last week in response to a caller who criticized soldiers who spoke out against the war in Iraq. While...

In the spring of 2004, Sen. John F. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, made a presidential campaign stop in Pittsburgh. Soltz went, curious about one of the generation's most famous opponents of the Vietnam War. He introduced himself, and the two men spoke briefly. Afterward, Kerry 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 recalled. "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...

Most Democrats who've gotten into trouble with their constituents over their stance on Iraq—including Senator Maria Cantwell, in early 2006, and Senator Hillary Clinton today—have only their pro-war votes and their reluctance to take a strong position for withdrawal to blame. Both Clinton and Cantwell, under pressure from angry Democratic voters, wisely shimmied their way out of it: Cantwell by supporting Michigan Senator Carl Levin's withdrawal legislation in the summer of '06, and Clinton by voting "No" on the surge and "No" on the surveillance legislation this year. Progressive U.S. Representative Brian Baird (D-3, Vancouver) has the exact opposite problem....

WASHINGTON - Despite their opposing views on the war, soldiers Pete Hegseth and Jon Soltz have much in common, not the least of which is time spent in Iraq. Both profess their love of the Army. They are young, athletic and clean-shaven, and they speak eloquently about honor and a sense of duty, as though plucked from central casting to play the role of the patriotic soldier. Above all, they draw heavily on their experiences in combat to justify their views on Iraq, hoping their message will resonate with voters because they _ unlike most of America _ have witnessed...

The first Daily Kos diary on the subject of the Soltz Shoutdown has disappeared from their site. Gone missing, along with more than 50 comments. Here’s where it used to be: Daily Kos: What happened to this soldier?!?!? Another diary post has now turned up to discuss this incident, from another Kos Kid whose cognitive dissonance reached critical mass, and this time I grabbed a screenshot. You know, just in case there’s another glitch in their software.

It took them a couple of days to get the spin together, but we now have an official position on the incident at the ‘Military and Progressives’ panel at YearlyKos, from an employee of VoteVets, whose founder shouted down and threatened that soldier. With obligatory “chickenhawk” slurs—the logically empty argument they never seem to get tired of. The conservative bloggers who’ve tried to make Jon look bad over this—like Michelle Malkin, Matt Drudge, and others—have no concept of this. Just like they have no concept of war in general. None of them has ever served the country in any meaningful...

They have an entry about the debate between pro-troop supporter Melanie Morgan of Move America Forward and Jon Soltz of the MoveOn.org affiliated group, VoteVets.org The Pro-Troop MoveAmericaForward Ad - WATCH HERE OR The Anti-War VoteVets Ad - WATCH HEREPOLL: WHICH AD IS MORE EFFECTIVE - VOTE HERE Which ad is more effective? Votevets.org Or... MoveAmericaForward.org