Iraqi veteran Kyle Seibolt took World War II veteran Gordon Kevs under his wing and pushed the elderly veteran’s wheelchair from booth to booth at the Colorado State Veterans Center’s annual Summerfest.

HOMELAKE — Kyle Seibolt finished his fourth tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Iraq on July 4, getting back to Colorado Springs in time to see the fireworks.

Now, he’s watching another kind of fireworks — the political campaigns leading up to Election Day.

Seibolt is traveling around the state talking with veterans — and others — about U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who is running for the U.S. senate.

On Saturday, however, he was helping the aged and aging veterans at he Colorado State Veterans Center as much as he was working on Udall's campaign.

He took World War II veteran Gordon Kevs under his wing and pushed the elderly man's wheelchair from booth to booth at the Colorado State Veterans Center’s annual Summer Fest.

Taking time to talk, he said, “What Congressman Udall says (about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan) is true because men like me advise him.”

Siebolt’s first tour was spent with the 101st Airborne and the other three were with Special Forces, intelligence.

Explaining that he was a National Security intelligence officer for the past seven years, Seibolt said he wanted to settle in Colorado Springs and, after he did, became interested in the upcoming elections.

“I knew I wanted to support a candidate that cares for veterans issues,” Seibolt said, so he began to do research.

He liked Udall’s record and decided to work on his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

One thing Seibolt didn’t understand at first was Cong. Udall’s vote against the war in Iraq, then the congressman voted to fully fund the troops and work to bring them home in an orderly fashion.

“He won’t do what they did in Vietnam, cut off funding to the troops to end the war,” he said of Udall. “He has maintained that we need another division (of the Armed Forces) — and we do,” said Seibolt. “We need to redeploy from Iraq to where our security really is at stake.”

Like many of his fellows, he speaks in graphic, derogatory terms of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda, an international terrorist network led bin Laden.

To continue the holy war beyond Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s current goal is to establish a pan-Islamic Caliphate throughout the world by working with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow regimes it deems “non-Islamic” and expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries.

After al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, the United States launched a war in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda’s bases there and overthrow the Taliban, the country’s Muslim fundamentalist rulers who harbored bin Laden and his followers. “Al-Qaeda” is Arabic for “the base.”

That effort wasn’t entirely successful. Terrorist forces from that area are spreading out around the Middle East and bin Laden has yet to be arrested.

“Our friends in Afghanistan are begging for help,” says Seibolt. “That should be our focus.”

While the focus strangely shifted to Iraq, Seibolt said it isn’t as if good could be done there.

During his first tour, he saw a country that could not stand on its own and, in the next three tours, saw a complete shift in which grassroots Sunni tribal leaders “stood up and said, ‘al Quaeda is killing our family and friends.’ Iraqis began getting out to vote.

They are now taking charge of their own government more and more, he explained.

“Udall recognizes that it wasn’t the troop surge, but the change in administration policy that helped this happen,” he said.

As each person now serving comes home, he or she will join the thousands of veterans nationwide in need of services and Seibolt has been asking as many as he can what issues are most important.

“Veterans’ health care needs take center stage,” he said. “there needs to be dramatic improvement. We need better facilities and better hospitals.”

According to Seibolt, Cong. Udall supports a fully equipped, full-fledged Veterans Administration hospital on the campus of historic Fitzsimons Hospital in Aurora. There have been suggestions of a hospital within a hospital and other changes of plans, with the VA facility eventually getting put on the back burner until Sen. Ken Salazar, Cong. Udall and others discovered it and began fighting to get the facility built in a manner that supports the needs of those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I need their help,” he said, speaking as a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. “Veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan don’t really understand how to deal with the VA and the challenges they face.”

During Udall’s time in Congress, Seibolt said, help has come. “He has backed $500 billion in veterans’ appropriations bills. Over six years, his opponent, Bob Schaffer, voted against veterans programs.”

“Advancing our system is critical,” he said.