‘Every politician involved in this will be held accountable. Blood on
their hands’…
(Bloomberg) – A group
of Iraq war veterans is launching a million-dollar effort to oppose President Obama’s
nuclear deal with Iran, trying to counter the president’s argument that those
who are against the deal are in favor of war.
Obama has said
recently that there are only two camps: those who support the deal versus those
who would prefer a bloody and costly war like the conflict in Iraq. The new ad
campaign complicates that, asserting that the deal itself will lead to more
war. And the voices putting forth that case do not prefer war; they are
soldiers who have had enough of it.
The group, Veterans Against
the Deal, was founded last month as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, and it does not
disclose its donors. Its national campaign starts today, including television
ads in states whose members of Congress are undecided on the Iran deal.
Lawmakers will vote on it in September.
The first of the
group’s videos features retired staff sergeant Robert Bartlett, who was badly
injured by an Iranian bomb while serving in Iraq in 2005. “Every politician who
is involved in this will be held accountable, they will have blood on their
hands,” he says in the ad. “A vote for this deal means more money for Iranian
terrorism. What do you think they are going to do when they get more money?”
The first ad will go
up in Montana, aimed at Democratic Senator Jon Tester. Subsequent ads will air
in North Dakota, West Virginia and elsewhere. The group will also send veterans
to speak at events in key states.
“We are going to
challenge those people who are on the fence,” Executive Director Michael
Pregent, a former intelligence adviser to Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray
Odierno who served in Iraq, told me. “Our main argument is that veterans know
Iran better than Washington, D.C., does. You’ve got a lot of veterans out there
who are pretty upset about this, so we are looking to capture their voices and
make sure they are heard.”
The campaign does not
actually dwell on the nuclear issue, but on a more immediate threat: When Iran
receives up to $100 billion of its frozen assets as part of sanctions relief,
it could use that money to increase its nefarious activities all over the
region. Top officials including Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff,have testified that Iran is likely to use at least some of
this cash to fund violence in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.
According to Dempsey, Iran was directly responsible for the deaths of at least
500 American service members during the Iraq war.
The Obama
administration has said that the nuclear deal is separate and distinct from
Iran’s regional mischief and officials are not counting on any positive change
in Iran’s behavior abroad — although as recently as this morning, Obama
has said he hopes that Iran might moderate its behavior. The president has also
said most of the money is likely to go toward fixing the Iranian economy.
At his speech at
American University last week, the president saidthose opposed to Iran
deal were the same people who supported going to war in Iraq in 2003 — implying
that deal opponents are hoping for a similar approach to Iran. He also said
Iranian hardliners were making common cause with Congressional opponents,
leading top Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to call on
the president to tone down his rhetoric when accusing deal opponents
of being pro-war.
Pregent said his
campaign will point out that U.S. soldiers who were victims of Iranian bombs
aren’t inclined to ally with Iranian hardliners. The group has recruited U.S.
service members who were victims of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps
barracks in Beirut, when 241 U.S. troops were killed by
Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces. Their efforts will also feature parents and
children of service members who were killed in the war in Iraq.
“Do they fall into the
category of those aligned with the hardliners in Iran,” Pregent asked, “because
they oppose this deal?”
Pregent told me that
the group’s donors include Democrats, Republicans and veterans who oppose the
deal. The board of the group includes Pregent, retired Marine Corps Lt. Col.
Brian Sanchez, retired Marine Corps Col. Stephen Robb, and Iraq war veteran
Pete Hegseth, the chairman of the group Concerned Veterans for America. That
group was financed by the Koch brothers’ donor network.
“We don’t want to make
this a partisan issue,” Pregent said. “We’ll have Democratic vets who voted for
Obama participating in this as well.”
He said the veterans
and families who are involved are motivated only by their own experiences and
views.
“These guys want to be heard. They know this
enemy. They have a constant reminder of permanent loss because of Iran,” he
said. “If someone said to me, ‘Aren’t you exploiting these veterans and
families?’ I would say, ‘No, aren’t you ignoring these veterans and families?’”
Retired Gen. Mike
Flynn, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, is
an adviser to the group. He said soldiers by and large weren’t advocates of the
war in Iraq, but were simply called on to serve and did their duty. But now,
many of those individuals are veterans, and they want to have a say.
“They have a right and
a responsibility to speak up,” Flynn said.
This new campaign
pales in size and scope to some of the other efforts to influence the debate
over the Iran deal. AIPAC has raised tens of millions to oppose the deal,
and pro-deal lobbying groups have raised several million to convince
lawmakers to support the pact. But those efforts have been largely based on
technical arguments; this one could be uniquely powerful because it puts a
human face on the issue.
President Obama keeps
trying to frame lawmakers’ decision as war without the deal or peace with it.
The new ads will make that harder to do, showing veterans who oppose the deal
without supporting war — who in fact believe the deal will lead to more war,
not less.
http://www.teaparty.org/showdown-iraq-vets-take-obama-iran-deal-112445/
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