Veterans group to air ad for Reid

A national veterans organization plans to begin airing radio ads in Nevada in support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today.

The VoteVets.org spot, airing for four days in Las Vegas and Reno, features Elliot Anderson of Las Vegas, an Afghanistan veteran who heads a group of Democratic veterans and their families.

"Harry Reid is leading the fight to redeploy our forces from Iraq responsibly, so they can focus on defeating the real terrorists. Senator Reid, troops like me thank you," Anderson says in the ad.

The group said the ads are to run a total of 23 times.

"We think it's important for people to know that Leader Reid supports the troops, and the troops support him," the group's chairman, Iraq veteran Jon Soltz, said Thursday.

The Nevada Democrat sparked a controversy last week with his comment that "this war is lost." Republicans including Vice President Dick Cheney blasted the remark as defeatist, and several Democrats have said they don't agree with Reid's language. Reid himself has backed off from the statement without repudiating it.

On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee began airing AM radio ads in Nevada accusing Reid of undermining troop morale.

Soltz said his group's ads were aimed at telling Reid's constituents that most service members support Reid and the Democrats' move to set deadlines for troop withdrawal in Iraq.

He noted that Anderson is from Nevada, while the veteran who voiced the RNC ad is not.

A war spending bill that would require troop pullouts to start by Oct. 1 passed the Senate on Thursday; President Bush has promised to veto it.

Soltz pointed to a December poll of active duty military personnel that found that more troops disapproved of Bush's handling of the war than approved of it. The poll, conducted by Military Times newspapers, also found 50 percent of those surveyed thought success was likely in Iraq while 41 percent thought it was not.

As for Reid's comment, Soltz said, "I don't think anyone knows what success or losing in Iraq really is. I don't, and I fought there."

But, he said, Reid had been unfairly maligned. "If you think those words hurt troops, they don't," he said. "What hurts troops is extending deployments from 12 to 15 months. ... What hurts troops is when you go to war like I did without the right body armor, not what one politician said."

VoteVets.org is a nonpartisan political action group that opposes the war. It has drawn controversy in the past for election-season ads that attacked Republicans and has collaborated with the liberal group MoveOn.org. A year ago, Soltz visited the Capitol Hill office of Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., to demand that Ensign apologize for accusing war critics of having "emboldened the enemy."

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the group's support "means a lot to Senator Reid."

"Senator Reid is happy that people listening to the radio will have an opportunity to hear a point of view that the majority of our country happens to agree with -- that if we don't change course in Iraq, we cannot be successful."

RNC spokeswoman Camille Anderson said the veterans' group lacked credibility.

"Clearly, Harry Reid and his friends are worried about Nevadans noticing what he is doing in Washington," she said.