Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz touted misleading descriptions of his military service during his 2006 congressional run, according to a media kit he distributed at the time obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Media kits, or press packets, are standard practice for candidates who seek to introduce themselves to the electorate and often feature a variety of news stories or interviews. In Walz’s case, he hoped to emphasize his public service as both a public school teacher and veteran.
But two of the articles Walz selected gave the impression that he served overseas in Afghanistan. That decision adds to a growing pattern of incidents in which Walz either misrepresented his military service or promoted others’ misrepresentations of it.
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vice presidential nominee, did not serve in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and his title of command sergeant major was revoked after he left the service just two months before his National Guard battalion was informed of a future deployment to Iraq.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.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
That Walz was not sent to a war zone came as a relief to him. In 2003, he told a local paper that "in the big scheme of deployments, this probably isn’t too bad. I thought we might end up in Iraq."
Throughout Walz’s first congressional campaign, he leaned heavily into his military service. As the Free Beacon reported Wednesday, Walz released a statement in March 2005 that he fully planned to continue his campaign in Iraq after hearing that his battalion was on the shortlist to deploy there.
"As Command Sergeant Major, I have a responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq but also to serve if called on," he said.
Other press releases from the time, obtained by the Free Beacon and available on archived versions of Walz’s campaign website, implied Walz served in Iraq as well. One from February of that year features an "in the news section" that includes two hyperlinked stories about "Iraq war veterans" running for Congress.
Walz has since cited his military service as a rationale for his support of new gun control legislation. In a video posted by the Harris campaign earlier this month, Walz said, "we can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is [sic] the only place those weapons are at." But Walz’s suggestion that he was carrying weapons "in war" ignores the fact that he never saw combat.
On at least two instances, Walz described himself as a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, the official name of the U.S. government’s war in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks.
As a first-time congressional candidate in 2006, Walz’s campaign announcement described him as "a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom," an archived version of the press release shows. Two years earlier, in 2004, Walz organized a protest against then-President George W. Bush in Mankato, Minn. A photo of the rally shows Walz carrying a sign reading "Enduring Freedom Veterans for Kerry."
Such a title historically applies to someone who served on the ground in Afghanistan during the Global War on Terrorism. Walz, a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, spent time in Norway in support of NATO forces and in Italy working in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. He told Minnesota Public Radio in 2018 that he had never seen combat.