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Oscar-award winning filmmaker and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Stone launched a new ad sponsored by MoveOn.org and VoteVets.org on Thursday featuring an Iraq veteran advocating withdrawal from the war. Vietnam veteran and Born on the Fourth of July author Ron Kovic joined Stone to release the ad and support the message it contains.
Stone told CNN that the ad's message is simple: "Support the troops. Listen to them. Bring them home," he said. "Give them a life, not death."
His own personal history as a veteran of the Vietnam war drives Stone's concern for the soldiers of this one. "I get passionate sometimes about it," he said. "In my lifetime, I had two wars. What's going to be next?"
John Bruhns, the Iraq war veteran featured in the ad, deflected any criticism that the film was unpatriotic.
"What I'm hoping people will see with this ad is that there are veterans that are coming home from this war that are very patriotic but are not going to blindly follow this president and this failed policy continually," Bruhns said.
Bush "tried to legalize the war, saying that it was Operation Iraqi Freedom. But I didn't feel that way. The people that were attacking the troops were Iraqi people feeling that we were occupying them."
"I'm no pacifist. I supported the war in Afghanistan. I consider myself as a patriot," he added.
