A Combat Veteran’s View of Tim Walz’s Lies About His Military Service

Three examples of would-be Vice President Tim Waltz’s disregard of fundamental military ethos and values

What does a man do?

Consider this scenario: A man is asleep in his house, as are his wife, son and daughter. Sometime after midnight, he wakes up and goes down a hallway to use the bathroom. Thinking that he may smell smoke, he follows the smell to its source. He cracks open the door to a utility room and is met with a blast of flame, heat and smoke. His house is on fire! What does he do? The man sprints to the nearest exit to save himself from the fire. He leaves his wife and children, hoping for the best. Maybe the fire department will get there in time to save them all. Maybe not.

How would any decent person react to what he did? Disgust and horror probably understate most people’s reaction. It is simply not what a man does. A man goes back and saves his wife and children at the risk – or even at the cost - of his own life. That is what a man does.

That not what Tim Walz did when his national guard unit got orders to deploy to a war zone, where all would be at risk. Walz was the senior noncommissioned officer in the unit. As we have seen from many recent reports, he abandoned his troops when they were preparing to deploy to Iraq, to go in harm’s way. His excuse - and a lame excuse it is - is that he was looking out for his career by planning a run for Congress that clashed with the inconvenience of a deployment to Iraq.

I cannot overstate how fundamental it is to the military ethos that a leader will be with his soldiers during times of danger. Examples of that in history and most combat veterans’ personal experience are legion. A purported leader who cops out on that responsibility is the equivalent of the cowardly father who abandons his family to a fire while saving himself. They will forever be held in contempt and disrepute. That is the company Walz is in.

Walz’s false claims that he served in combat

The second example is Walz’s false claim to have served this nation in combat. In an interview with Bloomberg news in 2006 he implied that he had served in combat, but without expressly saying so. His claim was that he had deployed overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The unspoken implication was that he served in Iraq. That was not true. I am indebted to

Jordan Schachtel

writing at

The Dossier

for blowing the whistle on the initial falsehoods. He reports,

Walz spent his entire career in the Army National Guard learning to lead people into battle, with training and his lone six-month overseas deployment to Italy provided at U.S. taxpayer expense. He then retired when he learned he was going to be leading people into battle in Iraq, leaving Minnesota’s 125th Field Artillery Regiment high and dry for a career in politics.

But that’s not what Tim Walz told the public when he decided to run for public office upon abruptly leaving the military.

Just months after leaving his battalion to go to Iraq without him, he announced a run for Congress, and the dissembling about his service record began immediately.

Instead of being honest about his early departure from the military, Walz told the media a much more heroic tale, one that was entirely fictitious.

Bloomberg’s Joshua Green, then employed at The Atlantic, was the first major reporter to profile Walz. In an interview with the then-congressional candidate, Green writes that in 2004, Walz left his hometown in Minnesota “to serve overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom.”

It’s unclear if this is Green, a veteran reporter, omitting major facts, or if Walz, the interviewee, is selling Green on a particular narrative. Nonetheless, the assertion is incredibly misleading, as it leaves the reader under the impression that Walz served as boots on the ground in the Global War on Terror, when in reality, he merely deployed to Italy in 2003 for a six month stint.

It gets much worse.

Green discusses a 2004 visit from former President George W. Bush to Gov. Walz’s hometown, in which a protesting Walz (who was still serving in the military) told the reporter about him supposedly demanding to speak to the then commander in chief.

“Walz thought for a moment and asked the Bush staffers if they really wanted to arrest a command sergeant major who'd just returned from fighting the war on terrorism,” Green writes.

While the first instance can be written off as an issue of unclear reportage, the second example cannot be explained away. Walz was not just serving in a support role for the war effort (from Italy), he had been “fighting the war on terrorism.”

* * * *

To this day, Green remains under the false impression that Walz served and fought in the war. In a piece for Bloomberg on Tuesday, he wrote that Walz served “in Iraq as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.”

Even if some people might be willing to give Walz the benefit of the doubt, he forfeited any reasonable doubt more recently. Speaking to an anti-Gun crowd about his opposition to the right to bear arms, guaranteed by the Second Amendment, he touted that “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are carried.” [sic] See the video here.

Walz is marketing himself as an experienced soldier who lends foreign policy heft to the Harris campaign due to his heroic service in war. It is all a sham, a lie. Tim Walz never deployed to a war zone, has never carried a weapon in war and never fought in a war. He is a coward and a fraud.

Walz’s misrepresentations about his rank

Walz’s official biography on the Minnesota government website misrepresents his rank when he retired. It says,

After 24 years in the Army National Guard, Command Sergeant Major Walz retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005.

That is not true. Waltz did not retire as a command sergeant major (pay grade E-9), which is the highest enlisted rank in the Army. In fact, he retired as a master sergeant (pay grade E-8). Walz obviously would have carefully vetted his official government bio to make sure it was accurate. But he has never corrected it in the six years since he was elected governor.

Here is the link to the Walz’s page on the Minnesota government website. In case they decide to change it in view of the recent publicity, here is a screenshot of the relevant part as of Wednesday evening.

There are explanations for the discrepancy that may shed light on the reason for the misrepresentation. But first a brief explanation of the reason for the rank discrepancy may be useful for the layperson.

Walz had received, in effect, a temporary promotion to E-9, command sergeant major, but upon retirement he reverted to an E-8, master sergeant. The reason for this is that in the Army, any soldier must serve at least three years in a particular rank before being allowed to retire at that rank. Thus, Walz was required to serve three years as a CSM before being eligible to retire in that rank. Because he did not serve the requisite three years, and also did not meet the requirement to complete the CSM Academy, he reverted to his prior rank of master sergeant upon retirement. Every day, since then he has been a retired master sergeant.

That may seem like a small difference to many civilians, but the differences in rank are meaningful to military people. And one reason for the uncorrected error is that Walz is using his supposed status as a retired command sergeant major to boost his political career. For example, just on Tuesday (Aug. 6) Politico pumped the Harris/Walz candidacy claiming that “Walz’s resume and military service record bring military bona fides to the Democratic ticket,” and that “Tim Walz could help Harris connect with veterans.” It touted the incorrect retirement rank without noting the error:

Yet Walz also spent 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring as a command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to serve in Congress when he joined the House in 2007.

But there may be a more “woke” explanation for Walz’s misrepresentations about his rank and his failure to correct his incorrect official bio and the mistaken reporters: Walz loudly and proudly proclaims that he is a “progressive.” And for “progressives,” the word “master,” even used as an innocent adjective, is both racist and sexist.

Remember the controversy at Ivy League Universities over the use of the term “House Master” to describe faculty members who presided over student residential houses, serving as mentors and advisers to the students? Harvard, Princeton, Yale and others retired the term “master” in response to “progressive” student demands. As the New Haven Register reported,

Getting rid of the title “master,” which for many has connotations of slavery, is among a number of demands Yale students have made….

The “progressives” made sure that businesses got the word, too. For example, the real estate industry quickly learned “master bedroom” must give way to “primary bedroom.” Because, you know, slavery, sexism, and racism.

Consumers and real estate professionals realize and understand the term “master” as something racist and offer a sexist implication. “Master bedroom” is a term implying a concept of dominance and ownership, which doesn’t sound to be so convincing and attractive in this modern time.

Kamala Harris has backtracked on a lot of positions but she and Walz still proudly embrace the “progressive” label. And progressives hate - just hate - anything described using “master” as an adjective. If a progressive does not want to be a House Master or sleep in a master bedroom, is there any wonder that one of the leading progressives in the country would never want to be referred to as “Master Sergeant”? You decide.

Do not forget

So, when you see Walz, Harris and their rah-rah supporters in the ancien régime press touting Walz’s patriotic military service, remember this: It is all a PR scam.