A veteran with a voice

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Iraq war veteran 1st Lt. Pete Hegseth served in 2005-06 with the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. Now serving with the New York Army National Guard, Lt. Hegseth is executive director of Vets For Freedom, a nonpartisan group established by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to "educate Americans about the importance of achieving success in these conflicts."

Vets for Freedom recently began airing television ads urging senators to support continuing the U.S. mission in Iraq.

A graduate of Princeton University, Lt. Hegseth plans to pursue a master's degree at Princeton in the fall. The following are excerpts of a recent interview with Lt. Hegseth:

Question: For those that haven't heard of Vets for Freedom and the "Ten Weeks to Testimony" campaign, why don't you start off telling us a little bit about it?

Answer: Vets for Freedom started actually in early 2006 by combat veterans because we did not feel that voice, the vet voice, specifically the pro-mission vets' voice, was ... being heard and was not part of the debate, and those soldiers that have seen it firsthand and fought in combat, their voices were not being heard in the media and throughout the country. So Vets for Freedom was founded as a communication platform, a nonpartisan, apolitical communications platform to really get these guys out there talking about why it is important that we complete the mission. ...

It is important that we give [U.S. Iraq commander Army Gen. David] Petraeus the time, the troops and the resources necessary to see his counterinsurgency strategy through. So our "Ten Weeks to Testimony" is really a crystallization of our larger mission, and we are boiling it down to 10 weeks over the summer, leading up to and until Gen. Petraeus reports [to Congress on progress in Iraq] in the middle of September and really mobilizing our veterans to get active in the states and then in Washington, D.C.

We had vets on [Capitol] Hill in July, about 40 of them on very short notice, and in August we are ... empowering them locally to get involved in town hall meetings and writing to [newspaper] editors and really making sure these members [of Congress], while they're home in the August recess, are really hearing from veterans from their local area, who have been there recently and are telling them we need to complete the mission.

Then in September, that's the culminating event for the "Ten Weeks to Testimony" campaign, we'll be having what we hope to be hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on the Hill, meeting with members of Congress in the days surrounding when they will be voting about what the future conduct is of the war and whether or not we should continue to fund Gen. Petraeus. It is really just injecting that veterans' voice that's the most credible and the most informed, and also the least represented, in the debate. ...

Q: I see that you were in Iraq, 2005-2006, during the [Iraqi] nationwide elections in October and December, right?

A: Yes.