Remember this from Ben Smith, from a couple of weeks ago?
Richard Blumenthal's claim to have served in Vietnam has put a spotlight on politicians' discussions of their military service, and I'm pointed to a pretty dramatic boast from Rep. Mark Kirk, the U.S. Naval Reserve officer running for Senate in Illinois.
"In my role in the military, I command the war room in the Pentagon," Kirk told a gathering of experts on U.S.-Chinese relations last May (at 4:18 in the video above).
This struck military observers as, literally speaking, implausible: The Pentagon's National Military Command Center is typically run in eight-hour shifts headed by an officer of the rank of a one-star general, who would outrank Kirk, an intelligence officer in the Navy, both a retired flag officer and current Pentagon official said.
This is an increasingly strange storyline coming from Kirk. The thing is, he serves as a reserve officer, and his past and current military service is commendable. There's no question of that. So why does he feel the need to pump up his service by making these ridiculously inflated claims about awards and duties? Commanding the Pentagon war room? Serving should be good enough--exaggerating the details of that service is just kind of bizarre.