The issues upon which all Operation Truth members agree, the three men said, are that the politicians in Washington should not send troops to war without outlining a clear mission and equipping them properly. And when soldiers come home, the politicians should adequately fund veterans' services, they said. Rieckhoff was once asked in an interview if it wasn't just an "urban myth" that some troops didn't have body armor. "I can tell you it's not. I was there." Acosta said he has been forced to navigate a confusing bureaucracy to obtain healthcare services. And Chasteen said he wants Americans to know that failure to plan for postwar Iraq has brought such chaos that the effort to build a democracy may be beyond salvation.

Before the invasion, Chasteen said, he reviewed a stack of documents a foot thick describing the combat plan. "No part of the order told us what to do afterward," he said. Troops kept asking about the post-combat orders. "When they finally came, they were this thick," he said, squishing his fingers together to indicate a thin stack of paper. "I thought, You've got to be kidding."

Chasteen's specialty is chemical weapons, and he recalled the moment he realized that Saddam didn't have any. It was when he crossed the Euphrates River. He had his bubble suit on, to protect against a chemical or biological attack. He held his chemical-detecting instrument in the air, watching to see if anything registered. "There was nothing. We knew that Saddam wanted more than anything to hold on to power, and so if he had the weapons, he would have used them then. But there was nothing." And yet, he noted, it was only last week that Iraq weapons investigator Charles Duelfer officially notified Congress that Saddam had no WMD.

Acosta is less steeped in the policy nuances; his contribution to Operation Truth is sharing the emotional and physical toll of combat. He was injured in July 2003, when an insurgent tossed a grenade into the Humvee in which he was a passenger. Acosta and the driver had left their base at Baghdad International Airport to purchase ice from a roadside stand; Acosta saved the driver's life by grabbing the grenade and tossing it out of the vehicle. It exploded in his hand.

The strange thing about getting your hand blown off, Acosta said, was that it doesn't hurt. "As soon as the grenade flew, the adrenaline started pumping, and it was like that adrenaline took over. Then there was just like a tingly feeling, like my hand had fallen asleep. But I knew it was gone right away. I saw my hand gone, I saw my bones coming out. I looked down at my foot, and my foot was turned completely backwards. I knew my legs were hurt. I didn't know if I was going to keep my leg. I knew my hand was gone, no matter what. And I said to myself, 'OK, my hand's gone. What next?' I tried to grab my rifle, but it fell apart."

Acosta added, "So I'm sitting there thinking, My hand's gone. My leg -- I don't know. And I'm looking down at the ground, at asphalt, because there's no more bottom to the Humvee. I was thinking, We're not going to make it, and I told my buddy, 'Just tell my parents that I love them.' And he cussed me out, telling me I was going to be OK. He was saying, 'Don't worry, I'm going to get you back.' And he got me back. I don't know how, but he did. He just drove."

A few months ago, Acosta heard Rieckhoff interviewed on a California radio station, and he contacted Operation Truth. He said he agreed to appear in the ad "to raise awareness, to let people know what's really going on. You see on the news that one solider got injured, two soldiers got injured, and you think, OK, it will be all right. But the reality is they come back missing limbs or their eyesight, and they've got families and their parents, people that care about them. People should know how these soldiers are affected physically and mentally."

Operation Truth has found that some conservative media outlets don't appreciate its point of view. Rieckhoff said he has appeared only once on Sean Hannity's Fox News show and only once on Laura Ingraham's talk radio show. "They were happy to have us when they thought we were just some dumb soldiers," Rieckhoff said. "But when they realized that we could talk and we were educated, that we'd been on the ground in Iraq, and that it was hard to challenge us, they didn't ask us back."

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