Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America isn’t all the name suggests. Their mission statement, “dedicated to the Troops and Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the civilian supporters of those Troops and Veterans”, makes it appear as if they have my best interests at heart. That’s sort of true.

It’s true provided I don’t agree with the war in Iraq. IAVA used to be known as Operation Truth (optruth.org). When I first got back from Iraq around the same time as Paul Rieckhoff, he approached me through my blog to join his group and write about my experiences. At the time I was in California and thankful that there was an organization out there for veterans of Iraq. However, I had trouble posting many of my stories for some reason (we’ll come back to this).

I got a call from Paul Rieckhoff one day asking if I’d be willing to go on Al Franken’s radio show to talk about the war. I agreed and a date was set. After writing my profile story on Optruth.org , I got another call from Paul. He mentioned he was worried about sending an active duty soldier onto the program. I told him not to worry because I was a big boy and that my commander AND public affairs officer had blessed off on my appearance. I wouldn’t go in uniform and would present my opinions and not speak for the Army. I told Paul I have nothing to worry about because I support what we’re doing over there which doesn’t conflict with Army policy. As the interview drew nearer he came up with more excuses and eventually dropped me as a guest all together.

Turns out I wasn’t liberal enough or critical of the war effort enough to represent Optruth, which became IAVA. Paul has devoted his time to blasting the Bush administration, the military’s progress in Iraq, and spreading literal lies about things going on over there. He’s a bitter 1LT who’s using his organization to further a political agenda, not provide a support network for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. I eventually withdrew my profile, deleted my posting on the site, and told Paul to cease from contacting me again. And I took my veterans membership to Vets For Freedom.

The Army Times ran a poll this week that ranked how soldiers ranked their congressman. As I read the article I got increasingly confused. Harry Reid given a A- by soldiers? Steve Buyer only given a C?! Nancy Pelosi given a B+ but Dennis Hastert an F?! Then I read the clincher - John Murtha given a B?!?!

Then I read how the poll was conducted. “In their first-ever scorecard on Congress, the group, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, gave fewer than 25 percent of Congress an “A” - and most received far lower grades.” It all suddenly made sense. I thought this was a legitimate poll, but instead just a poll of liberal veterans in IAVA. The article provided the address www.iavaaction.org to point people in the wrong direction. This is the ARMY TIMES, the Army’s newspaper.

Those grades that the writer gives were given by members of IAVA, not an unbiased group of Iraq and Afghanistan vets. It turns out that the reason I had trouble getting some of my posts published was because they were supportive of our Iraq. Many posts were deleted with emails saying that Optruth wasn’t the place for such politics. I had directly confronted other veterans on their incorrect stories that were in the same unit I was in. Paul Rieckhoff didn’t care that his story was completely false, just that I had challenged it. My post was deleted, this other soldier’s story stayed.

Posted by chcknhawk on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 11:36 pm. Filed under Missouri Politics, National Politics.