US vice-presidential candidate under fire for claiming he fought in Iraq

Shafaq News/ Tim Walz has come under fire for claiming he carried weapons “in war” after the Democratic vice-presidential candidate was accused of shirking a deployment to Iraq.

The Minnesota governor faces claims by Republicans that he exaggerated his military record since he was unveiled as Kamala Harris’s running mate this week.

His roughly 24-year military service is part of a personal biography that the Harris campaign hopes will appeal to the American heartlands where the Democrats are trying to reclaim ground.

But a campaign video in which Walz frames his support for gun control legislation within the context of his army background has further fuelled claims he misrepresented his military service after retiring before a deployment to Iraq.

Mr Walz said: “I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks.

“We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”

While Walz would have carried a gun during his deployments, he does not appear to have ever seen active combat.

In a 2018 interview, he conceded: “I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did.”

However, his use of the phrase “in war” triggered a fierce backlash, with fellow troops accusing Walz of “abandoning” his US Army National Guard unit by retiring shortly before it deployed to Iraq in 2005.

“The big frustration was that he let his troops down,” Doug Julin, a retired soldier who worked with Walz, told the Washington Post.

The Harris campaign told the newspaper that Walz carried, fired, and trained others on how to use “weapons of war innumerable times” but declined to address why he claimed to have done so in war.

Retired US Command Sergeant Major Thomas Behrends claimed Walz was fabricating his record to advance his “political career”.

Walz has not responded to the recent attacks, but has previously said of Behrends’s comments: “I don’t know if Tom just disagrees with my politics or whatever, but my record speaks for itself.”

Behrends also took issue with Walz describing himself as a command sergeant major in campaign promotional material despite quitting before serving the full period required to officially retire at the rank.

Walz earned the promotion - one of the top ranks for an enlisted soldier - in September 2004 but retired in May 2005.

Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance, himself a military veteran, accused Walz of “stolen valour”.

Vance, an Ohio senator, said: “When the US Marine Corps asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it... When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him. I think that’s shameful.”

However, another retired command sergeant major who served with Walz said there was no firm indication that the unit would be deployed to Iraq before his departure. 

“There were lots of rumors, and we didn’t know where we were going until... early summer, I believe,” Joseph Eustice told ABC News.

According to National Guard Records, Walz’s battalion was alerted about a deployment in July 2005, two months after he retired and around five months before he filed paperwork to run for Congress. The battalion deployed in 2006.

There is no evidence that Walz left to avoid a wartime deployment, and experts suggest his retirement would have to have been approved by his commander.

Eustice said he remembered Walz struggling with the timing of his run for office, weighing up his desire to serve in Congress with his wish to avoid asking for a deferment to do so.

“He had a window of time. He had to decide. And in his [time spent] deciding, we were not on notice to be deployed,” he said. 

Walz has also been accused of being misleading about his involvement in Operation Enduring Freedom, a US military operation centered on Afghanistan. 

Photographs have emerged of Walz, a critic of President George W Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, holding an “Operation Enduring FreedoVeteransns for John Kerry” poster during the Democrat’s 2004 presidential run.

While Walz was deployed between 2003 and 2004 to Norway and Italy in support of the operation, he was never deployed to Afghanistan. 

Footage has since emerged of veterans of the operation confronting Walz’s political staff in 2009 and suggesting his description of his record gave the false impression he had served in Afghanistan. 

The Trump campaign has relentlessly attacked Mr Walz over his military record in the last few days amid a shift in the polls which has seen the former president’s lead narrow in several battleground states. 

Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser, who led an effort to aggressively attack Mr Kerry’s military record in the 2004 election to great effect, said Walz’s record would be vigorously scrutinised.

“Nothing regarding his lies has weaponizednised in a political sense. That’s about to change,” LaCivita told Politico. 

However, the strategy carries risks for Republicans given Trump’s own Vietnam-era military deferment. 

Some GOP strategists also believe the campaign should expend their efforts attacking Harris’ governing record rather than focusing on Walz, a relative unknown to the American public.

Leading Democrats have hit back at the attacks on Walz. Mark Kelly, an Arizona senator and combat veteran, said: “Don’t become Donald Trump. He calls veterans suckers and losers and that is beneath those of us who have actually served.”

Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, said the GOP attacks were “strategic”. 

Buttigieg tweeted his support for Walz

“Team Trump needs us tied up in debates over pre-retirement conditional rank promotions because they are desperate NOT to discuss their (unpopular) policies, like tax cuts for the rich and banning access to abortion,” he said.