Tim Walz embellished his military service record

Postvieww said:

Nonsense nobody’s goal is to trash a veteran.

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Oh no, that's exactly the goal here. They're swift-boating him, just like they did to John Kerry, which shouldn't be surprising since (among other things) the guy who ran Swiftboat Veterans for Truth is now running Trump's campaign.

Postvieww said:

Nonsense nobody’s goal is to trash a veteran. That veteran has an obligation to be truthful about his service. Which he himself taints by lying about it for political gain. Many who actually served with him do not buy that explanation you refer to.

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He was honest, you just don’t understand how the military works.

Tropical Wilds said:

He was honest, you just don’t understand how the military works.

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It is beyond me that a couple of people in the forum who have served in the US forces and appear to know exactly how this situation has panned out and have explained it in clear and concise detail are being ignored (and they can reasonably be considered to have political views right of centre).

I swear that if they had said that Walz was lying about his rank and that he did in effect skip an overseas posting, leaving his men in the lurch then at the very least I'd excuse myself from the discussion because I couldn't from that point onwards support Walz. I'd probably have to admit that fact before dropping out of the discussion. I'd say that I supported his politics but his character was now in doubt.

Similarly, I swear that if this situation was one in which Trump was involved then I'd be backing up Trump. Explaining that I did not support his politics but that as far as his military service was concerned, he served honourably and deserves our thanks.

As it is, I respect the views of those who know a hell of a lot more about this than I do and certainly a lot more than people who have been simply repeating what they read in the 'news agencies' of their choice.

So as it stands, from everything I've read and seen, Walz is a man of character, honourable and trustworthy. And as for Trump? Well, let's just say that he is everything that Walz is not.

Tropical Wilds said:

He was honest, you just don’t understand how the military works.

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I do understand how deception works.

Bradskii said:

It is beyond me that a couple of people in the forum who have served in the US forces and appear to know exactly how this situation has panned out and have explained it in clear and concise detail are being ignored (and they can reasonably be considered to have political views right of centre).

I swear that if they had said that Walz was lying about his rank and that he did in effect skip an overseas posting, leaving his men in the lurch then at the very least I'd excuse myself from the discussion because I couldn't from that point onwards support Walz. I'd probably have to admit that fact before dropping out of the discussion. I'd say that I supported his politics but his character was now in doubt.

Similarly, I swear that if this situation was one in which Trump was involved then I'd be backing up Trump. Explaining that I did not support his politics but that as far as his military service was concerned, he served honourably and deserves our thanks.

As it is, I respect the views of those who know a hell of a lot more about this than I do and certainly a lot more than people who have been simply repeating what they read in the 'news agencies' of their choice.

So as it stands, from everything I've read and seen, Walz is a man of character, honourable and trustworthy. And as for Trump? Well, let's just say that he is everything that Walz is not.

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The opinions of military veterans on this forum do not trump(no pun intended) the opinions of veterans who served with Walz.

Postvieww said:

The opinions of military veterans on this forum do not trump(no pun intended) the opinions of veterans who served with Walz.

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I'm afraid they do. The veterans on this forum who have served have no axe to grind, are most definitely not dyed-in-the-wool left wing Democrats (probably just the opposite), have no reason to lie about a matter that affects someone they are not likely to vote for and who have answered all the doubts in very great detail.

They are most definitely the people you should be listening to: likely Republican voters on a conservative Christian forum who have many years of service on which to base their explanations.

Postvieww said:

The opinions of military veterans on this forum do not trump(no pun intended) the opinions of veterans who served with Walz.

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He repeatedly misrepresented his rank, it was even on their website but now it has been changed

Bradskii said:

It is beyond me that a couple of people in the forum who have served in the US forces and appear to know exactly how this situation has panned out and have explained it in clear and concise detail are being ignored (and they can reasonably be considered to have political views right of centre).

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Nothing on here surprises me anymore. I've had folks fail to understand or argue against things far, far more black and white than that

Postvieww said:

The opinions of military veterans on this forum do not trump(no pun intended) the opinions of veterans who served with Walz.

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Why not? Nobody's arguing about anything that would've required knowing Walz personally - for example, nobody's arguing about whether he's lazy, or whether he's a jerk, or a bad leader. Nobody's even arguing about the facts of the timeline regarding his retirement. What everybody's arguing about is how to interpret the facts regarding his retirement - i.e. whether or not it constituted some dereliction of duty on his part to retire when he did. You don't need to know Walz personally in order to have an opinion on that - you only need to know something about how military retirements work.

He retired a couple months before their deployment orders even came in (and nearly a year before they actually left), which means he'd submitted his papers several months prior to that. If not then, when would it have been okay to retire?

Since we're tossing around quotes from people in his old units, here's somebody else saying that the other guys are lying:

iluvatar5150 said:

Nothing on here surprises me anymore. I've had folks fail to understand or argue against things far, far more black and white than that




Why not? Nobody's arguing about anything that would've required knowing Walz personally - for example, nobody's arguing about whether he's lazy, or whether he's a jerk, or a bad leader. Nobody's even arguing about the facts of the timeline regarding his retirement. What everybody's arguing about is how to interpret the facts regarding his retirement - i.e. whether or not it constituted some dereliction of duty on his part to retire when he did. You don't need to know Walz personally in order to have an opinion on that - you only need to know something about how military retirements work.

He retired a couple months before their deployment orders even came in (and nearly a year before they actually left), which means he'd submitted his papers several months prior to that. If not then, when would it have been okay to retire?

Since we're tossing around quotes from people in his old units, here's somebody else saying that the other guys are lying:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/08/politics/video/walz-military-record-claims-vance-keilar-ip-digvid

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The issue I see is that he repeatedly misrepresented his rank.

BPPLEE said:

The issue I see is that he repeatedly misrepresented his rank.

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That’s one of the two issues raised. The other is this notion of abandonment.

iluvatar5150 said:

That’s one of the two issues raised. The other is this notion of abandonment.

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He was eligible to retire from what I understand so I don't have a problem with that. It was his prerogative

iluvatar5150 said:

That’s one of the two issues raised. The other is this notion of abandonment.

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I just got off the phone with a friend who is a retired Army National Guard Sergeant Major (an E-9, but not in the position of Command Sergeant Major).

His response, in his words: "The issue of Walz' retirement is a giant nothingburger."

Something he adds is that his knowledge of the Minnesota National Guard in particular is that their state policy is, "Twenty years and out" regardless of rank. Walz must have had great favor with the command structure to stay in as long as he did.

He points out, too, how specious it is to think one knows anything about whether a unit will deploy until they actually get those orders. He had made what he considers a mistake in having told his wife, "They're talking about us deploying to Saudi" and putting her through a tremendous amount of anxiety...and the deployment never happened.

He said that even when there is a deployment rotation plan written...most of the time that plan doesn't work out. Even at his E-9 level, and he knew everything his commander knew, the real-world situation was unpredictable because there were too many moving pieces. The rotation plan may call for one unit to deploy on a certain date, but that unit can only deploy if several other sister units meet all their own intermediate milestones on time. For instance, an infantry unit may depend on a certain engineering unit...they can't operate in the field without that engineering unit. But if that engineering unit has failed its last couple of exercises, it's not going to deploy...so the infantry unit can't deploy. But the infantry unit won't know whether all its necessary sister units and all the other details are in place until they actually get the deployment orders.

So, the bottom line is that you live your life until you actually get deployment orders. If the time comes in your life that retirement seems your best option, then you retire. If deployment orders come down later (which is very close to playing a roulette wheel)...that's why the military has a strict chain of succession. In Walz' case, he had two ready successors already there in his unit. They were his same permanent rank, either one ready to be frocked to CSM just as he was. They didn't even have to train a new guy.

For a man in Walz' position.... Wait, let me describe Walz' position. For every military member, there comes a time when we've been in long enough to retire and we're essentially in it only for the feelz. It's familiar, we've been successful, and it's comfortable. It may be for a bit more glory, get that last bit of rank (which nobody cares about but ourselves), but for most people there isn't much glory left...most officers aren't going to to colonel, much less general. It's not even for the money, because those last few years won't amount to that much more retirement pay. For enlisted people, we're talking about a couple of hundred dollars a month.

At the same time, we know we will have to get a job and continue to live as civilians starting from scratch at the halfway point of our lives, when we are at the peak of our responsibilities to our families. When we go past 20 years of service, we're in our 40s, and time is not in our favor. Hardly anyone can just completely retire when we leave the military. Moreover, few of us have jobs that we can roll over into an advanced civilian job. Even if a soldier had been in the military computer programmer field, the soldier who has stayed in past 20 hasn't done any coding for years...he's been a middle manager of coders. And, of course, most soldiers have been doing things that have zero correlation with the civilian world.

I was personally dismayed that all the management education, training, and experience I had accrued in my last decade in the military was considered absolutely useless in the civilian community, regardless of the expert help I'd had in constructing a good "interpretational" resume. So, there I was with a young family needing a management-level income...and a management-level civilian job was just not going to happen.

I was fortunate in that I'd already spent that last ten years wandering over into IT networking. I could quickly use my GI Bill to snap up some certifications, and that's what paid the mortgage until I fully retired. That is, btw, why the military gets retirement pay...it's to supplement the disadvantage that they won't be as a 40-year-old ex-soldier where they could have been if they'd stayed in the civilian market all that time.

So, those years in service after 20 are working at a continual disadvantage to the average soldier. The military isn't going to let him stay until he's old enough for Social Security, and every additional year in uniform makes him less desirable to the civilian community. So, when the most strategically advantageous time comes for retirement, barring something as specific as already having deployment orders in hand, people who have been at that point in the military know you bail at the best time to bail...no hard feelings about it.

RDKirk said:

I just got off the phone with a friend who is a retired Army National Guard Sergeant Major (an E-9, but not in the position of Command Sergeant Major).

His response, in his words: "The issue of Walz' retirement is a giant nothingburger."

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Thank you for the additional, and ongoing insight.

RDKirk said:

Something he adds is that his knowledge of the Minnesota National Guard in particular is that their state policy is, "Twenty years and out" regardless of rank. Walz must have had great favor with the command structure to stay in as long as he did.

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Regarding this point in particular, he hit his 20 year mark a few months before 9/11 and chose to re-enlist after. It would not surprise me if such policies were loosened at that time.

RDKirk said:

I was personally dismayed that all the management education, training, and experience I had accrued in my last decade in the military was considered absolutely useless in the civilian community, regardless of the expert help I'd had in constructing a good "interpretational" resume.

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IME, large swaths of the civilian world aren't terribly interested in management training. Some very large companies do and, if you're lucky, maybe some smaller ones run by people who came from large companies - but there are tons IME that give no thought to it at all.

Postvieww said:

I do understand how deception works.

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Apparently not. He is in no way being deceptive as has been explained multiple times.

Tropical Wilds said:

Apparently not. He is in no way being deceptive as has been explained multiple times.

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Wrong ! It is a fact he was deceptive. What you call explanation I call spin.

Postvieww said:

Wrong ! It is a fact he was deceptive. What you call explanation I call spin.

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It has been explained, repeatedly, how it works. And I saw the exact same thing play out with my father and his retirement.

Simply, you are proud to be wrong and to attack a man who served his country for 24 years, then served his country in government for even more, is disgraceful.

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Vambram said:

x.com

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I’m pretty sure I pointed out to you in the other thread that Kolb wasn’t his commander. He took over after Walz had already left.

iluvatar5150 said:

I’m pretty sure I pointed out to you in the other thread that Kolb wasn’t his commander. He took over after Walz had already left.

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I apologize but I didn't see that post. Is there proof when Kolb became that Battalion's commander? What position in the Minnesota Army National Guard have directly before he was promoted to Battalion commander there? Was he in the same Battalion as was Walz before Kolb's promotion to Battalion commander?

Vambram said:

Is there proof when Kolb became that Battalion's commander?

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Minnesota National Guard Staff Lineages​

1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery
Commanders

LTC Bruce Jensen, Oct. 1, 2002 - Sept. 30, 2004
LTC Paul Conery, Nov. 10, 2004 - July 31, 2005
LTC John Kolb, Aug. 1, 2005 - Dec. 2, 2007
LTC Robert C. Larsen, Dec. 3, 2007 - Nov. 14, 2009

Walz retired in May 2005.

Vambram said:

What position in the Minnesota Army National Guard have directly before he was promoted to Battalion commander there? Was he in the same Battalion as was Walz before Kolb's promotion to Battalion commander?

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I'm unable to find this information, maybe someone else can.