This whole stolen valor accusation brought up by veterans and picked up by Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has the press scrambling. CNN's Jake Tapper has called accusations of stolen valor against Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz "crazy". We know that Walz served for more than two decades and we respect him for that. We know he was stationed in Italy for a short time. We know that he retired two months before his unit received “alert orders” to be deployed to Iraq. The current argument is over whether that's the reason he retired, and whether or not he served in Operation Enduring Freedom.
The Washington Free Beacon has obtained a 2006 campaign press kit outlining Walz's military career.
Huh.
Joseph Simonson writes:
A March 20, 2006, Wall Street Journal report included in the kit states that Walz "served overseas during the early war in Afghanistan." Walz told the paper that the Iraq war is "not something that is a political game."
Another, from the January/February 2006 edition of The Atlantic, describes Walz as "a command sergeant major who’d just returned from fighting the war on terrorism." The piece goes on to characterize Walz as one of the "number of veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq" who were running for Congress that year.
Walz, now the Democratic vice presidential nominee, did not serve in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and his title of command sergeant major was revoked after he left the service just two months before his National Guard battalion was informed of a future deployment to Iraq. Walz was stationed overseas in Italy from August 2003 to April 2004.
The fact is, we shouldn't have to talk about this for three days. Kamala Harris held a rally with Walz this afternoon. She could have spoken to the press and cleared everything up. But instead, we have the media trying to pick up the pieces and put together what Walz has claimed and what the record shows. Harris did actually take some questions before getting on her jet, and when asked about the stolen valor claims, said, "Listen, I praise anyone who has presented themselves to serve our country. And I think that we all should."
That's not an answer.