Progressive foreign policy group the Truman National Security Project today released a new ad that features several 9/11-era veterans questioning whether Mitt Romney is qualified to be commander-in-chief.

The one minute video first highlights Romney’s various foreign policy fumbles throughout the campaign, including his confusing Afghanistan policy, his failure to mention the war there and commemorate U.S. troops in his RNC speech, and his campaign’s reluctance to talk about national security. “You have shown us from London to Libya that you are over your head,” an Army vet says, with the ad closing with three other vets saying they don’t trust Romney to lead the military. Watch it:

Apart from Romney’s foreign policy missteps, veterans should have cause for concern. Romney hasn’t laid out any concrete plan for how he would tackle veteran unemployment or any other issues the nation’s military members face after serving in war.

Drew Sloan, a West Point graduate who served combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, appeared in the ad and spoke at the Truman Project’s launch event. “Neither of us really want to make this kind of video,” Sloan said, referring to a fellow vet that also took part in the project. But, Sloan added, “Mitt Romney is not qualified to be commander-in-chief,” citing the fact that Romney appeared to go to great lengths to avoid service in Vietnam in the 1960s and has now surrounded himself with those who took the United States to war in Iraq.

“The ad will run on television in Ohio – a key battleground state in the Presidential election – starting today,” said a Truman statement, adding that it “is part of a significant buy which will also run online in Florida, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Ohio.”

During Wednesday’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney didn’t dispute President Obama’s criticism that the Republican candidate has pledged to raise military spending by an additional $2 trillion. Romney repeatedly promised throughout the back and forth that he would both cut taxes and reduce the deficit, despite his desire to boost military expenditures, and didn’t say how the math would work out.

Throughout the debate, Obama raised the military spending issue a total of four times, for example:

OBAMA: Now, Governor Romney’s proposal that he has been promoting for 18 months calls for a $5 trillion tax cut on top of $2 trillion of additional spending for our military. And he is saying that he is going to pay for it by closing loopholes and deductions. The problem is that he’s been asked a — over a hundred times how you would close those deductions and loopholes and he hasn’t been able to identify them.

Romney has said that he would tie military spending to 4 percent of GDP, which would mean a $2.1 trillion increase over 10 years. Even under during the George W. Bush years, the base defense budget made up an average 3.3 percent of GDP.

CAP’s Lawrence Korb foundthat Romney’s claim to slash the deficit didn’t mesh with such an increase in military spending. The resulting boost in military spending is charted out here:

At no time did Governor Romney dispute that figure, nor did he offer up how he intended to pay for such an increase, which the Center for Budget and Policy Priorites has said would necessitate large cuts in Medicaid, education, and other programs. Watch the clip from the debate:

Perhaps Romney’s silence meant conceding defeat. Even his own top foreign policy aides can’t explain how the Republican nominee would pay for such a massive, and completely unnecessary, increase in military spending.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday night strongly warned against a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and urged the United States and its allies to pursue a diplomatic course to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Speaking before an audience in Norfolk, VA, Gates — a Republican who served as Pentagon chief in both the Bush and Obama administrations — said an attack would make a nuclear armed Iran more likely and have “catastrophic” consequences, the Virginian Pilot reports:

Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of wiping out Iran’s nuclear capability, he said, and “such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.” [...]

“The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world.”

Referring to recent protests against the falling value of Iran’s currency, Gates added that the international sanctions regime facilitated by the Obama administration is beginning to have an impact on the Iranian economy. “[T]hat’s our best chance going forward, to ratchet up the economic pressure and diplomatic isolation to the point where the Iranian leadership concludes that it actually hurts Iranian security and, above all, the security of the regime itself, to continue to pursue nuclear weapons,” he said.

Gates has been warning against an attack on Iran for some time, saying back in 2008 that a war with Iran “would be disastrous” and “the last thing we need.”

But the former Defense Secretary’s comments last night echo assessments from various experts and current and former U.S. and Israeli officials that an attack would only delay Iran’s nuclear program and give leaders there incentive to weaponize — a point the New York Times picked up on last weekend. “In reports, talks, articles and interviews,” the Times reported on Sept. 30, scholars and military and arms-control experts “argue that a strike could actually lead to Iran’s speeding up its efforts, ensuring the realization of a bomb and hastening its arrival.”

A recent bipartisan expert report, whose signatories include Brent Scowcroft, ret. Adm. William Fallon, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Amb. Thomas Pickering, recently concluded that an attack on Iran would only delay, not end, its nuclear program and would risk an “all-out regional war’ lasting “several years.” Aside from the military and geopolitical implications, another recently released study concluded that thousands of Iranians would die in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

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