It sure looks like we misunderestimated Mark Kirk, who said of the newest revelation about discrepancies in his military record: “I simply misremembered it wrong.” The dealio this time?
Kirk, an intelligence officer, told the Sun-Times he was never fired on as he flew over Iraq or Kosovo. He never said he was fired on, he said in reply to a question from the Sun-Times. “No, no. There’s no contradiction. I remember being illuminated by air defense.”
Little problem, though:
Contrary to his claim to the Sun-Times, Kirk did talk about being shot at, on Oct. 1, 2003, from the House floor. Kirk spoke so imprecisely as to be misleading. “I just returned from Iraq and the trend is for the better,” Kirk said, with his comments captured on C-SPAN. He goes on to say, “the last time I was in Iraq I was in uniform, flying at 20,000 feet and the Iraqi Air Defense network was shooting at us. That force is now gone.”
Was Sinbad the back-seater on that F-14?
And there’s yet another problem, this one uncovered by Markos Moulitsas. In a letter to constituents, Kirk claimed he was a veteran of Desert Storm, even though he was never deployed to Kuwait or Iraq. Markos, himself a veteran, explains:
I was in the Army during Desert Storm, but am not a veteran of that war. Why? Because I was stationed in Germany and never deployed to Kuwait or Iraq. Kirk might argue that his efforts aided the war effort. Well, so did mine. I spent weeks shuttling supplies from depots in Germany to Frankfurt, where they were loaded onto transport planes to the Gulf. I lugged around everything from ammo to toilet paper (no joke). I spent weeks more working on my base’s post office, helping the small office handle the crush of letters and care packages being sent to deployed soldiers by their families. Seems trite, and it kind of is (and tedious as shit), but there’s little more important to a soldier than mail call. Trust me on that.
Still, that doesn’t make me a “veteran of the Desert Storm mission”, just like it doesn’t make Kirk a veteran of that war.
This is pretty much exactly the same thing that Kirk did with regard to Operation Iraqi Freedom – claim he was a veteran of that engagement even though he only served during that conflict. And of course, it’s pretty much exactly what Dick Blumenthal did, too. As Markos says, “Kirk served honorably. He did an important job, and by all accounts did it well. So why the need to embellish?” You could ask the same thing about Dick Blumenthal. And of course, you could also ask where the media firestorm is about Kirk. At least Blumenthal’s mis-statements were confined to one matter – Kirk’s now up to three.
we have a POS who lies about his military service, and we have a POS with possible ties to the mob and Blago. Pick your poison Illinois voters.
It’s nice to see Kirk obliging my prediction so well 😀
Fact is Kirk is a veteran and has a rather distinguished career as one to boot. Saying he is sorry, is the right track, after a week we will be focusing on the results of the June 8th primary, the oil spill, and whatever gaffe another candidate makes.
Here’s what I’m seeing. At first I was all like, “Oh, this is what Blumenthal did, he was fine, this will wash over and no one will care.” Blumenthal had a presser, said he was sorry, moved on. Kirk, meanwhile, has many instances of many different combats he’s talking about and instead of saying “you’re right, I shouldn’t have said that, it’s a disservice to other veterans, etc” he’s saying “I simply misremembered it wrong.”
This would all go away if he was up front and honest on it, now he’s creating a dialogue of being dishonest, untrustworthy, and lacks character.
Bumenthal handled himself and his campaign well afterward, Kirk is playing coy, and trying to ignore the story. It’s never the crime, it’s always the coverup.
I mean, what’s the message here? “He may or may not have been shot at while he was serving in two wars”? It’s the same reason why the Jim Webb novel scandal or the Joe Sestak navy scandal didn’t hurt either of them. There wasn’t any smoking gun that made them look bad, and it served to remind voters about their positive attributes (novelist and admiral, respectively).
Most of these “misstatements” were by his ad guys and Congressional staffers. It’s not anywhere like Blumenthal, who cynically told multiple crowds that he served in Vietnam when he didn’t.
In fairness, while the NYT may not be reporting on it, people around here read the Tribune (hardly a liberal bastion), which has been slamming Kirk pretty hard.
1. IL is a democratic state and the GOP candidate has to be very good and the democratic candidate very damaged for them to win a seat. Giannoulias is damaged, but Kirk’s lying and exaggeration suggest that he might not be good enough.
2. Blumenthal had 20 years of being elected statewide. Kirk has been elected 5 times to one congressional district and is neither known or loved by most Illinoisans.
Of course we don’t know how any scandal will end up (how many smart people predicted that Clinton would resign after the stain on Monica’s dress?), but there is good reason to think that this could damage Mr. Kirk. And he must think so because he just went into abject-apology-mode.
With all due respect, I hope that politically the IL dems can hold this opportunistic asshole’s head under water until he drowns(electorally of course). Republicans have no business competing for a senate seat in Illinois.