Mitt in Action on the Iowa Front

While Romney was shaking hands, an Iraq war veteran started calling out Romney's name. Ron Devoll Jr. is a 26-year-old from Cedar Falls, Iowa, who was wounded in Iraq by a mortar round. He was wearing a Red Sox baseball cap. Here's the transcript of what happened next:

DEVOLL: I'm an Iraq veteran. (Romney reached out to shake his hand.)

ROMNEY: Thank you for your service, and go Red Sox.

DEVOLL: If you were elected when would you pull the troops out?

ROMNEY: When the job is done, and hopefully that gets done soon, and the surge is successful. I sure hope it is going to be successful.

DEVOLL: Don't you think this is compared to the Vietnam War?

ROMNEY: It is by a lot of people. But I think it is different in a lot of respects, and the key respect is this: And that is that if this becomes, if we leave in the wrong way there, this could become a conflict that could engulf the entire region and potentially draw us back again into a worse situation. And so I believe the surge, I hope the surge will be successful. We're going to give it a shot. We are going to hear what Petraeus has to say in a month, and hopefully it will be successful. We can start bringing our troops home. That's what I would like to see.

DEVOLL: But why aren't we...

Devoll never got to finish asking his third question. Romney's traveling press secretary, Eric Fehrnstrom, announced to everyone that Romney had to go somewhere else to be. "Thank you very much," Fehrnstrom said.

But Devoll, who said he once voted Republican, was just getting started. "I think that Romney was disrespectful," Devoll told reporters after the candidate had left. "I tried to ask him questions. You know I am an Iraq vet who served my country and he can't give me a few minutes of his time, and he wants to walk off. I think that's really disrespectful," he said.

"I was wounded over there," he added. "I lost a lot of friends over there."

Link.