‘Traitor’: Guardsman Lashes Out at Walz Again Over Leaving Before Iraq Deployment
“He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice-president.”
Thomas Behrends has often spoken out about presumptive Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz since the latter retired from the military right before his 2005 Iraq deployment.
You’ll hear the left praise Walz for being a National Guardsman, but…what did he do?
He quit.
Walz served for 24 years in the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery. But he retired “months after a warning order that the battalion would be deployed to Iraq.”
He ran for Congress and won a seat in 2006.
Behrends has brought up the situation many times.
Now that Walz is the likely VP candidate, Behrends is shouting it out again.
“I needed to hit the ground running and take care of the troops — and tell them we were going to war,” Behrends told The New York Post. “For a guy in that position to quit is cowardice.”
Behrends and others consider Walz a traitor.
“When your country calls, you are supposed to run into battle — not the other way,” continued Behrends. “He ran away. It’s sad.”
Behrends added: “He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice-president.”
Walz tried to remain in their good graces by offering “to raise funds to cover his fellow soldiers’ bus trips home for Christmas.”
The soldiers saw right through him as some considered it as a “cynical ploy.”
“If it were me, I would feel guilty about leaving and do something to make up for it, but if you ask me he was doing it to buy votes,” said Behrends. “He will do anything for votes.”
Walz’s unit lost three men in Iraq, including Kyle Miller, who was only 19 at the time:
Like Walz, Miller signed up for the National Guard in high school, and hoped to work as an auto mechanic after his deployment, according to reports. He died when the vehicle in which he was a passenger was hit by a roadside bomb on June 29, 2006.
“Unlike Walz, Kyle volunteered to go with his unit,” said Behrends, who worked with Miller’s mother, Cathy Miller, to create a bronze memorial of her son.
Behrends and retired Guardsman Paul Herr slammed Walz in 2018 during his first campaign for Minnesota governor:
On May 16th, 2005 he quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war. His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for Congress. Which is false, according to a Department of Defense Directive, he could have run and requested permission from the Secretary of Defense before entering active duty; as many reservists have. If he had retired normally and respectfully, you would think he would have ensured his retirement documents were correctly filled out and signed, and that he would have ensured he was reduced to Master Sergeant for dropping out of the academu. Instead he slithered out the door and waited for the paperwork to catch up to him. His official retirement document states, SOLDIER NOT AVAILABLE FOR SIGNATURE.
Read this letter from Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr, retired Command Sergeants Major of the Minnesota National Guard. pic.twitter.com/Ny3GplniRz
— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) August 6, 2024
Alpha News interviewed Behrends in 2022.
“The public needs to know how pathetic his leadership was as a National Guardsman,” he said.
“The public needs to know how pathetic his leadership was as a National Guardsman,” said Tom Behrends, a retired command sergeant major, about Gov. Tim Walz. Watch the video below or read the story here: https://t.co/NQRcUrL5KL pic.twitter.com/LKB10EtYKk
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) September 7, 2022
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Comments
Swift-boat the daylights outta this guy,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiftboating
https://x.com/MsEBL/status/1821029198645063713 Socialism!
But, but, but ..! Trump’s bone spurs…!
Not sure if you’re joking, Grizz, but, yes. He served. Many didn’t.
Glass houses and all that.
(Former Navy Flight Surgeon and husband is retired Navy pilot).
His opposite number is J.D. Vance however, Kamala has also never served.
However Harris was not expected to serve; she didn’t dodge conscription because there was none, and also because she was a woman. Trump came of age at a time when there was conscription, and he got out of it with a medical diagnosis that may have had more to do with his father’s money than with his actual medical condition. So that’s quite a significant difference.
Vance and Walz both came of age after conscription, both volunteered to serve, neither saw combat. Vance spent time in theater, while the closest Walz came was Europe. So that leaves only the controversy over the timing of his departure.
“..the timing of his departure.”
“Aye, there’s the rub.”
If he ducks out on this oath, what will he do in DC?
Do your research Milhouse, Biden had the same number of draft deferments as Trump, without any medical justification. Who made the glass houses comment? I pray that you never have to go through bone spurs.
Tim Walz is the TEMU version of Bernie Saunders. He is a bone thrown to the Islamic wing of the DNC.
In fact I am.
and mean tweets. you can never ignore the mean tweets,
damn country is full of ret*rds.
So Walz, on top of everything else, is a blue falcon.
Gee, what a surprise. -sarc
Kamala, you shot yourself in your foot with this pick.
Start saying this everywgere you go No Balls Walz.
He is hashtag tampon Tim
Good ole Casper, disappear in a second and return as Blister…a fitting name for what appears after the work is done.
LOL.
And I bet Walz tips in quarters – “Here you go. Don’t spend it all in one place.” … if he tips, at all.
There’s no charitable way to view this episode that can overcome the fact that Walz:
1.. Was in a unit which received orders to deploy
2. Had accepted a conditional promotion
3. Failed to meet the conditions of the promotion
4. Chose to abandon his unit and avoid the deployment
5. Continues to mislead about this episode
IOW he prioritized his own interests above that of the Soldiers in his unit as well as to avoid deployment to a combat theater and did so in an underhanded, deceitful manner. Personally I would call it cowardice, others may disagree.
I’ll stipulate that it sometimes works…differently in the Guard components compared to regular reserve components. But, It has been my experience (I did a tour a reserve Company I&I) and I’m certain DOD policy since the 1970s, that once a reserve unit receives a formal activation preparation notice (the notice to instruct units to prepare for an imminent activation order), retirements are frozen. Some exceptions to this would include service members who are up against a mandatory retirement date that would fall inside the period of contingency (the period of expected activation) and for those members who have a projected EAS that falls within that period same period. IOW, you have to be on a contract that will survive the full period of activation (and even this can often be waived at member’s request). Members can request a delay (of a few weeks, at most) and hardship waivers, which are sparingly awarded.
Walz was no where near mandatory retirement age. And, as I understand it, he had just been promoted (or frocked) and signed a 3-year reenlistment to be eligible to for a career school (CSM school) pursuant to that promotion. It is extremely odd that Walz would have been allowed to pursue retirement once a formal activation ‘warning’ or notice was received. I would be really interested to know if he claim some kind of hardship disability and if so, what was it? Did he lie under oath?
Hate Walz but his quitting the military is nothing compared to disgusting Kerry’s naval shenanigans and lies. He quit, but did not desert. If you want to get personal, keep reminding people he is only 60 and was arrested for a DUI going 96 mph, blew way over the limit, and had the charges reduced to public littering or something. A school-teacher drunk turned governor. Are his unstatesmanlike outbursts a sign of authenticity or alcoholic senility?
Coma-La could not have given Trump an easier target to campaign against
The guy’s a socialist piece of crap–but this isn’t a place you can get him.
It isn’t like he did a hitch and chickened. He did 24 years. He retired.
There’s a lot to get him on –his friendly neighborhood socialism for one –that’s what you go for.
THIS is a trap.
I can’t agree with you Azathoth. A “Warning Order” notification of a pending deployment goes out long before the actually orders, up to two years prior for reserve and National Guard units. There is no way Walz didn’t know of this deployment when he dropped his retirement papers just months before the unit deployed. He may have served well and faithfully for 23 1/2 years prior to that, but as the Viet Cong told us at the end of Viet Nam, “that is also irrelevant”. One of the stated values of the US Army is Selfless Service. He failed the test.