BLACKFIVE: Paul Rieckhoff from IAVA re-responds

« Did Iran Attempt a WMD Attack on Israel? | Main | "This War is Lost" - Sen. Harry Reid »

Paul Rieckhoff from IAVA re-responds

Posted By Uncle Jimbo

I'm proud of IAVA's history. The info you cite is from public pages
of ourwebsite, and I even wrote a book about the development of our organization.
So none of this information you reference is really new or revelatory.
Anybody who did a Google search could have found out exactly the same
thing.

It is also no secret that the Obama campaign hired Phil Carter. When
Phil got hired for the campaign, he stopped doing any IAVA work. Phil also
suspended his work at the Washington Post. That is how it works when
you choose to work for a campaign.

I founded IAVA with the sole purpose of improving the lives of
America's newest generation of heroes. As veterans joined the effort, and became
members, a few early folks stood out. They volunteered and sacrificed
to help me build the organization into the force it is today. One of these
individuals was Phil. IAVA is grateful to count him and many others as
members who were part of its early development.

Phil continues to be a proud IAVA member, but holds no formal position
within the organization. He is not and never has been a paid staff
member of IAVA. He has never communicated with IAVA in his capacity as an Obama
Campaign staffer.

As a founding member of the organization, Phil was invited, as an
individual, to participate on the Host Committee of our annual
fundraiser. IAVA invites hundreds of our members and supporters to participate in
the event in various ways and we're thrilled to have one of the
nation's leading Iraq veterans lend his name to this important evening. Of course, Phil
hasnever used his campaign title or any campaign resources in any way to
raise funds for or otherwise promote or assist IAVA.

IAVA lists him and the other founding members on its website in order
to recognize their efforts in establishing an organization that now counts
over 125,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and civilian supporters in its
member\base.

We have folks at IAVA who have worked on both sides of the aisle in the
past. In fact, our Director of Governmental Affairs, Todd Bowers,
volunteered for the McCain campaign in 2000. He also worked for a
Republican for three years on the Hill. He was a key leader in our
fight for the new GIB.

It is important to recognize that the information Phil publicized was
already publicly available. IAVA sent a national press release with
the information (which you may have gotten). A number of Republicans and
Democrats in Washington who got good grades did exactly the same thing
that Phil did (Republican Senator Coleman, as an example, linked here:
http://coleman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&P
ressRelease_id=e3809358-9626-1c58-b864-779a9311ec13).

Senator McCain, like Senator Obama, loses points in our Report Card
because he missed a large number of key votes. It is pretty simple. We
believe that showing up to vote matters when you are a Senator. Even Vets for
Freedom acknowledges that McCain was only there to vote with them about
50%of the time. If they calculated their score the way we do, saying that
you need to vote to get credit, he'd get a bad grade from VFF,
too. Check it out: http://vetsforfreedom.www.capwiz.com/bio/id/192=C=S.

IAVA is looking forward to working with whoever gets elected President
to support new veterans. And rather than shoot the messenger, we©öd hope
conservative blogs like yours would show support for the many
Republicans on our "A Team" for 2008, like Representative Peter King, Senator Norm
Coleman, Senator John Warner, Senator Pete Dominici and Senator Kit Bond. There
are plenty of people who got grades higher than both McCain and Obama, and
they all deserve some credit.

If you have additional questions about the Report Card, check out the
FAQ link here:
http://www.veteranreportcard.org/about_the_report_card.html.

Outside of that, Veterans Day (Nov 11) is coming soon. IAVA will be
organizing hundreds of events around the country. We'll be bringing
OIF/OEF vets together on that important day--regardless of who they voted for.
And we hope you and all the guys at Blackfive will support that effort.