Chicago Tribune Editorial: Pants on Fire Award

Chicago Tribune Editorial: Pants on Fire Award
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
6:55 p.m. CDT, June 1, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-kirk-20100601,0,7271126.story


The Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor Award recognizes "the exceptional achievements of an outstanding Naval Intelligence career professional." It's a big deal. U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a 21-year Navy reservist, can list it proudly on his resume.

Instead, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate has diminished the award — and himself — by misrepresenting it as an even bigger deal: The U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year.

The Taylor award is presented by the National Military Intelligence Association, a professional group. In 2000, it was given to Kirk's Intelligence Division Electronic Attack Wing, based in Aviano, Italy. The unit was honored for its combat service during the Kosovo conflict in 1999.

Kirk has never won the Intelligence Officer of the Year, awarded annually by top Navy officials. But he has made that claim for more than a decade — in speeches, in campaign materials submitted to the Tribune and other news organizations and in the biography.

Now that he's been called on this fib, Kirk wants to shrug it off as little more than a typo.

"Upon a recent review of my records, I found that an award listed in my official biography was misidentified as 'Intelligence Officer of the Year,' " he wrote last week on his blog. He didn't mention that the review was prompted by a Washington Post reporter's questions, which were prompted by a call from Kirk's Democratic rival, Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.

Kirk acknowledged that his boast wasn't "legally precise," and quickly corrected the bio. But that didn't stop Giannoulias from crowing about it at a Memorial Day veterans parade in Arlington Heights. Kirk fired back by pointing out that the only uniform Giannoulias ever wore was for a Greek basketball team. "When I was serving in Afghanistan, he was making loans to convicted felons and mobsters," Kirk said, for about the thousandth time.

This is not Kirk's finest moment. It reflects the hubris he shows from time to time. We'd like to hear the congressman acknowledge that the award listed on his bio was inflated, not "misidentified." We'd like to hear him say he's sorry. But no.

"Let's be clear: I misstated the name of an award that I actually received for service that I actually performed in a conflict where I actually served," Kirk said.

Let's be clear: Kirk claimed the U.S. Navy had named him its top intelligence officer when in fact he'd shared in an award presented to his entire unit by an outside organization. He knows the difference. The public does, too.

Kirk's embellishment doesn't rise to the level of Democratic Senate hopeful Dick Blumenthal of Connecticut, who likes to talk as if he did time in Vietnam. A Marine reservist, Blumenthal never left the U.S. Closer to home, Calumet Park Mayor Joseph DuPar falsely claimed in a campaign flier that he'd received the Medal of Honor, the military's highest decoration, for his Army service in Vietnam.

Kirk's campaign Web site features a photo of the candidate in Navy flight gear and notes that he deployed to Afghanistan in December 2008, becoming the first House member since 1942 to serve in an imminent danger zone. His military record includes service during conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and Bosnia, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and yes, that Rufus L. Taylor award.

"I think he's got an honorable record," Giannoulias said. "I don't know why he feels the need to embellish the record and not tell the truth."

Neither do we.



Chicago Sun Times Editorial: Kirk's trying to dodge blame for false claims
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
June 2, 2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/2342376,CST-EDT-edit02.article


If you're a politician who pumps up your military record, you should admit it, beg for forgiveness and move on as best you can.
But, please, don't insult the public by pretending your exaggerations were all honest errors.

Once -- maybe.

More than once -- not a chance.

This, unfortunately, is a lesson Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk has not learned.

Kirk, who has served 21 years in the Naval Reserve, is getting hammered -- deservedly so -- for making himself out to be the combat vet and James Bond he never was.

But rather than taking full responsibility for several false claims, he's blaming everything and everyone from a faulty memory to his Democratic opponent, Alexi Giannoulias.

People do make mistakes. But so many embellishments over so many years can't be explained away as inadvertent slipups:

• Kirk and his staff have long claimed he was named the U.S. Navy's intelligence officer of the year. At a 2002 House committee hearing, C-SPAN recorded him saying, "I was the Navy's intelligence officer of the year." A Web video for his Senate campaign made the same claim until last week.

Not true. The Washington Post reported Sunday that the Rufus Taylor Intelligence Unit of the Year award for 1999 was given to Kirk's unit -- not to him personally.

Kirk's spokesman said, "We found the award was misidentified and corrected the name," but the Post said the website was corrected only after the newspaper began inquiries.

• Kirk further said on a video, "I command the war room of the Pentagon."

He does? As part of his Naval Reserve duty, Kirk works weekends as a deputy intelligence director at the war room -- officially known as the National Military Command Center -- but the commander usually is a one-star general.

• Kirk's congressional website bragged, until last week, of his "combat service in Kosovo."

Not true. Kirk did not serve in combat in Kosovo.

• Kirk claimed on his website in 2005 to be "the only member of Congress to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom," according to the blog Nitpicker. He also claimed, referring to Afghanistan, to be the first representative in Congress who is a reservist to be deployed to "an imminent danger area" since World War II.

An exaggeration. Kirk served during Operation Iraqi Freedom, as his corrected website now says, and though he went to Afghanistan, he technically never was deployed there.

As someone who was accused of embellishing his credentials as early as 2000, Kirk should know that all such claims can, will and should be checked out. In American politics, military service is like a platinum credit card.

Just two weeks ago, Connecticut's Democratic Senate candidate, Richard Blumenthal, got caught claiming he had served in Vietnam. Blumenthal had served in the Marine Reserves during the war, but never left the United States.

Blumenthal, predictably, admitted guilt to only "totally unintentional" errors.

Why is it that every time a politician makes an "unintentionally" false claim about his military record he stumbles up -- not down -- the ladder? Nobody who was a colonel ever says he was a corporal.

Mark Kirk likes to present himself as a moderate Republican who, if elected to the Senate, would be adept at reaching across the aisle to work with Democrats.

But to do so, his word must be his bond.

The voters of Illinois have reason to doubt.