Jon Soltz rapped his pen on a conference table as he ran through plans to take on politicians who back the war in Iraq. The former U.S. Army captain and Iraq war veteran was demanding television ads.

“I want a hit on Fox,” he barked into a speaker phone.

He wanted more e-mail blasts and more donors.

“Do we have a target list?” he asked of the team gathered for a Monday morning conference call. “Let’s go get those dollars.”

There isn’t much to the nerve center of his operation: three rooms on the seventh floor of a dingy Manhattan office building.

But in a little more than a year since he launched VoteVets.org, Soltz has helped transform the war debate in Washington by channeling the raw anger and frustration of many Iraq vets into a political campaign both sophisticated and visceral.

Soltz, 30, and his band of veterans have shaken the GOP’s claim to be the pro-military party. They accuse Republicans of recklessly sending troops to war without the right equipment and failing to care for thousands of wounded and traumatized war veterans.

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