Last week a new group called Freedom’s Watch launched a $15 million, five-week campaign of TV, radio and Web ads featuring military veterans aimed at retaining support in Congress for President Bush’s “surge” policy on Iraq.

The big ad buy, funded by high-profile Republicans who were aides and supporters of President Bush, reflects a furious public relations battle that will unfold as Congress debates the crucial progress report by Gen. David Petraeus, which is due on 15 September. The opening ad, by Jamestown Associates of New Jersey, shows a military veteran saying: “We are winning on the ground and making real progress. It’s no time to quit. It’s no time for politics.”

Organisers said the ads will run on Fox News Channel, CNN and elsewhere, with radio versions airing nationally during the conservative talk shows of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

The board consists of Blakeman; Fleischer; Mel Sembler, a Florida Republican who was Bush’s ambassador to Italy; William P. Weidner, president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.; and Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The donors include Sembler; Anthony Gioia, a Buffalo businessman who was Bush’s ambassador to Malta; Kevin Moley, who was Bush’s ambassador to the US Mission to the United Nations in Geneva; Howard Leach, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman who was Bush’s ambassador to France; Dr John Templeton of Pennsylvania, chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation; Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast Spectacor, the huge Philadelphia sports and entertainment firm; Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and ranked by Forbes magazine as the third-wealthiest American; and Richard Fox, who is chairman of the Jewish Policy Center and was Pennsylvania State Chairman of the Reagan/Bush campaign in 1980.