Paul Rieckhoff served as an Army Reserve infantryman in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, leading security sweeps and searching houses for weapons. After returning home, he founded Operation Truth to educate Americans about veterans' experiences in Iraq and advocate for their welfare. Operation Truth is critical of policies like stop-loss extensions and the use of private military contractors. Rieckhoff argues the government has not adequately supported Reserve and National Guard members who are being relied on increasingly for combat roles. He continues speaking publicly and running Operation Truth while still serving in the New York Army National Guard.

1. Back from Iraq and Fighting a
Personal Mission
Profile: Paul Rieckhoff
By MARK HUNTLEY | August 20, 2004
Paul Rieckhoff is on a soldier's mission. Again. Except this time
he isn't leading a platoon of 38 Army Reserve infantrymen on a
security sweep in Baghdad, Iraq. Instead, he's the executive
director and founder of Operation Truth.
Mr. Rieckhoff spent most of 2003 and the first month of this year
going house to house and block by block, searching for weapons.
He spent a total of 10 months knocking on doors - up to three
knocks and translated warning shouts if necessary - before
kicking the doors in.
"Sometimes, on the other side of that door," says Mr. Rieckhoff,
"there would be an Iraqi grandmother, shielding a little kid. And
sometimes it would be a room full of men with guns." Sometimes
he and his team disarmed those men. And sometimes they didn't.
Often he had to write up a voucher for an innocent and newly
door-less Iraqi to turn in to the U.S. occupation authority for
door-hanging reimbursement.
This was Mr. Rieckhoff's frontline war mission in Iraq. Hours,
often days, of boredom in the dust and sun were followed by
split-second decisions of life and death, and the personal
aftermath of action.
Back on home soil and released from active duty in March, Mr.
Rieckhoff, 29, barely missed a step in signing on to a new

2. mission: to publicize and educate Americans about the
experiences and perspectives of veterans of the Iraq campaign.
Within weeks of his return, he spoke to students at his alma
mater, Amherst College, about the ongoing ground war in Iraq.
That led to an invitation to deliver the Democratic Party's
response to the president's weekly radio address on May 1, an
offer the self-described "staunch political independent" accepted
without hesitation.
"The DNC provided me the opportunity to use my voice to speak
for the soldiers on the ground in Iraq or just back who are either
forbidden from telling their story because they're on active duty,
or who are scared or unwilling to say anything once they return,
because they don't know they can. I wrote my own speech, the
DNC looked at it, I got legal advice, then I read what I wrote,"
Mr. Rieckhoff said. His Amherst and radio speeches criticized the
current Iraq policy on multiple counts, from an insufficient
number of boots on the ground to the lack of a clear exit strategy.
As a result, Mr. Rieckhoff was offered a role in the Kerry
campaign. He respectfully turned it down, he says, because "I
want to hold both parties responsible. I'm unhappy with both
sides. For me, Bush is wrong on Iraq, but Kerry still doesn't seem
sure of his position." While he accepted an invitation to attend
the Democratic National Convention (and is still waiting for a
response to a request to go to the Republican convention in New
York), he was disappointed.
"Kerry talked about Vietnam, but he didn't talk about Iraq. He
had Vietnam veterans on stage with him, but there were only
three Iraq veterans, including me, at the convention, and none
spoke."
As for the response from the military to his actions, Mr.

3. Rieckhoff says he's only been contacted once, in a one-minute
telephone call from a colonel at the Pentagon just before his May
speech.
"He identified himself as Colonel such-and-such, said they'd
heard I was going to give the address and wanted to confirm that
I was off of active duty. I told him I was, citing my DD214, the
separation from active duty form," Mr. Rieckhoff says. "We're
sort of in new territory here. The Reserves and Guard have never
been used to this extent before. The difference is that I am not
regular Army, although those guys do have some recourse to
speak their minds as well," he adds.
Mr. Rieckhoff formed Operation Truth - a "nonprofit,
nonpartisan" organization - in response to what he sees as a
poorly planned occupation of Iraq. Operation Truth also aims to
be an advocate for the welfare of serving troops, veterans, and
their families. With a young staff of half a dozen paid by Mr.
Rieckhoff, a friend who rode a golden parachute out of the dot-
com bubble, and small donations solicited on the group's Web
site (www.optruth.org),the organization closely examines
government policy on a range of contentious military issues.
Those include recent orders that have led to the involuntary
prolongation of active-duty status for serving soldiers beyond
their contractual obligation. Mr. Rieckhoff and Co. referred to
the so-called stop-loss policy as a back-door draft.
They are also concerned about the use of private contractors to
perform military functions in Iraq and elsewhere. Mr. Rieckhoff
charges that companies including Halliburton, its subsidiary
Kellogg Brown & Root, and Blackwater are overcharging the
American government - and the taxpayers - for subpar,
unregulated work, as well as poaching the ranks of the military to

4. fill higher-paying private jobs.
He adds, "Introducing profit to the battlefield sets a dangerous
precedent." He is also livid about planned cuts of more than
$910 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs in the
Bush administration's 2006 budget.
The list of policy bones Mr. Rieckhoff has to pick is long. Many
have to do with the concerns of the newly re-engaged citizen
soldiers of the Army Reserve and the National Guard. He says
the government has not stepped up to help when these two
groups - originally intended to serve as a home defense force -
are sent into action, leaving jobs back home.
"Since we're relying more and more on Reserve units, like mine,
to fight our wars, then we need to take care of the families of the
Reserves."
Mr. Rieckhoff also alleges a hierarchy within the military, in
which members of the Reserves and the Guard are treated as
second-class soldiers.
Upon leaving Fort Stewart for Baghdad in 2003, Mr. Rieckhoff
says he and his men were given 25-year-old flak jackets while
regular Army troops swaggered by in brand-new body armor.
When they finally received newer gear, they welded and taped
the older stuff on to their unarmored vehicles.
Finally, Operation Truth contends that psychological problems
abound for returning Iraq veterans and are not being adequately
addressed by the Pentagon. Mr. Rieckhoff sees a spike in suicides
among returnees and lost one of his own men to that fate in
April. He cites the use of the anthrax vaccine and the drug
Lariam as possible contributing factors. He also talks of the
stresses of being away from family for more than a year.

5. "During the war, we had five divorces, and after the war, one
suicide, all in our platoon of 38 guys. I think that's sadly not
uncommon," Mr. Rieckhoff says.
He compares forming the group to conducting the Army's
postcombat After Action Review. "After every mission," says Mr.
Rieckhoff, "the whole platoon would sit down together and
discuss, 'What went well? What went wrong? What can we do to
fix it?' It was a kind of mutual pulse-taking. As a commander,
that allows you to identify who or what have screwed up most.
This administration hasn't examined its own performance in
Iraq, hasn't done an AAR of the Iraq mission, and hasn't held
anyone responsible. That's a failure of leadership."
Mr. Rieckhoff's sense of mission may be hereditary - he's a third
generation warrior. His father and grandfather were both drafted
and served in the Army, the former in Vietnam, the latter in the
Pacific theater of World War II.
His father originally didn't want him to join the Army, telling
Paul, "Our family's already paid its dues." But now he's proud of
his son, and so are his Vietnam vet buddies at the upstate electric
utility, where many of them work.
Mr. Rieckhoff grew up in the small town of Garrison, near
Peekskill, N.Y. After being recruited to play football at Amherst,
he coached the sport back in his hometown, worked in some
bars, and enlisted and served in the Reserves.
After taking a job with J.P. Morgan in New York, he transferred
to the National Guard, where he graduated from the Officer
Candidate School with honors in the summer of 2001.
Mr. Rieckhoff was three days into a self-imposed break from
Wall Street, preparing for a trip overseas, on the morning of

6. September 11, 2001. He rushed to ground zero in his civvies,
changed into his uniform, and took part in the rescue and
clearance effort there for the next two months.
In June 2002, he graduated as a lieutenant from the Army's
Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning, Ga. and
immediately volunteered for service, knowing he would likely be
serving in Iraq sooner than later.
He got there in April 2003, as leader of 3rd Platoon, B Company
of the 3rd Brigade, 124th Infantry Regiment, and led more than a
1,000 combat patrols in Baghdad over the following 10 months.
Since his return in March, Mr. Rieckhoff has lived first in
Brooklyn and now in the East Village. He is organizing an
Operation Truth fund-raiser and launch party set for August 24
and preparing for a college speaking tour this fall. He's also
seeking out other Iraq veterans to join the cause and talk about
their Iraq experience and current needs in public.
Besides running Operation Truth, Mr. Rieckhoff is again serving
in the New York Army National Guard as a first lieutenant. He
expects to see overseas action again sometime in the next few
years.
http://www.nysun.com/on-the-town/back-from-iraq-and-fighting-a-
personal-mission/619/