It’s to be hoped that, by now, many voters—Republican, Democrat, and Independents— know that the current Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Waltz of the “Harris/Waltz” ticket symbolically threw down his rifle and ran off the battlefield. Oh wait, he never even made it to the combat zone; he threw down his rifle in CONUS (aka, the continental United States).

Walz’s epic betrayal of his fellow troops was so inexcusable that a chaplain called him out for being a coward:

The chaplain of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s field artillery regiment said there is no excuse for the Democratic VP pick to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment — not even running for Congress.

“In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told The Post.

[snip]

“I needed to hit the ground running and take care of the troops — and tell them we were going to war,” Behrends, a Minnesota farmer, previously told The Post of the 500 soldiers under his command. “For a guy in that position, to quit is cowardice.”

However, with the current ethics of the mainstream media—never let the facts hurt the Democrat Party—a national CNN reporter went on the offensive against my fellow Marine JD Vance’s combat service:

...[A]ccording to CNN's Brianna Keilar, Vance "may be an imperfect messenger" on the issue.

“Because we have, as you introduced him, as a combat correspondent, which is what [Vance’s] title was,” Keilar told her CNN colleague Dana Bash Thursday. “But when you dig a little deeper into that, he was a public affairs specialist, someone who did not see combat, which certainly the title ‘combat correspondent,’ kind of gives you a different impression. So he may be the imperfect messenger on that.”

Of course, as all in the media and soon all Americans are finding out that JD Vance can certainly take care of himself:

Brianna this is disgusting, and you and your entire network should be ashamed of yourselves.

When I got the call to go to Iraq, I went.

Tim Walz said he carried a gun in a war. Did he? No. It was a lie. https://t.co/kt0oxzZb83

— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 8, 2024

However, as was to be expected, no matter the battlefield, Marines band together and never run from a fight. USMC Major Shawn Haney had Marine JD Vance’s back in this verbal national media firefight:

A retired USMC major confronts @brikeilarcnn for minimizing @JDVance's service as a combat correspondent while defending Walz's stolen valor.

"There is a hall in our Defense Information School of 130 heroes who served in that capacity who did not make it out of a combat zone." https://t.co/GAT0EF3Anm pic.twitter.com/Mc0bwkvlCM

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 9, 2024

Major Haney is correct about the fact that a combat zone is a combat zone, no matter the person’s role. We recently lost my friend Paul “Bud” Bucha, a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, who dedicated his brilliance to helping all veterans with PTSD. When we spoke, Bud pointed out to me that in what we called the sandbox wars (i.e., the wars in the Middle East), the phrase “in the rear with the gear” was obsolete.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, death and injury stalked everyone because IEDs blew our troops on the road, leading to that Godawful phrase “pink mist.” It was equally possible for 122 Rocket or other mortar to strike a base camp at any time, leading to multiple casualties.

To challenge JD Vance’s combat theater service tragically mocks the very commendable progress the Department of Veterans Affairs has made in recognizing the PTSD hurt of some who have borne the battle regardless of their Military Occupational Specialty.

Perhaps it’s time for Brianna Keilar and those other reporters who now sit in judgment on what constitutes ground combat to start to “walk the walk” when it comes to being a combat correspondent. They could walk in the footprints of the greatest war correspondent in American history, Ernie Pyle.

I am sure CNN could reach out to President Zelensky of Ukraine and embed reporter Keilar and that other outlets could do the same for their reporters who think that JD Vance’s job was as cushy as theirs. They could report embedded within front-line maneuver elements of the Ukraine Army as it breaches Russian defenses.

It would be a wonderful opportunity for these reporters to learn about war reporting in the field. Perhaps, like Ernie Pyle, they’d get their own Pulitzer’s. Additionally, Americans would benefit from journalism based on knowledge, not ideology.

Image by Andrea Widburg using AI.