From BuzzFlash:
Illinois GOP Congressman Mark Kirk
Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk represents one of the wealthiest Congressional Districts in the nation, the North Shore of Chicago, and he comes across as sort of the last of Northern GOP moderates.
But that's all just window dressing. Kirk votes with the GOP whenever they need him, and occasionally backs something sane like gun control when John Boehner doesn't require his vote and knows that Kirk can't appear to be a right wing hack if he is going to get re-elected from a moderate constituency back home.
Now Kirk is the GOP candidate for Obama's former Senate seat and rumors and facts are swirling about him. Let's start with the rumors that he's gay. Of course, BuzzFlash doesn't care if he's gay, but if he is,we do care that he would be a hypocrite for opposing the repeal of DOMA and DADT. There are more Republicans in closets on Capitol Hill then there are closets, which is fine if they weren't such hypocrites.
But some proven facts about Kirk recently surfaced have to do with a military record that he has brandished about to show his hawk bonafides that are not true. And it wasn't just one claim, it was multiple false assertions about his service in the reserves. What's more, Kirk – when confronted with the truth – even fessed up that there were numerous “mis-statements” that he had made and put on his website about his armed services history.
To the Chicago Tribune editorial board, Kirk took the Fifth about whether the lies were politically motivated: “Kirk would not directly answer questions about whether the series of errors amounted to an effort to embellish his military credentials as he takes on Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the first-term state treasurer, in an open-seat Senate race with national implications.”
In case you're curious, here are some of the key “embellishments” (lies) Kirk has made:
For the first time, Kirk on Thursday said assertions he came under enemy fire while flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq in 2000 may not be true because there is no record of whether his aircraft was being fired upon. While speaking from the U.S. House floor in October 2003, however, Kirk was more certain: "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."
Kirk also revealed that a letter he sent to his congressional district in 2009 described him as a veteran of Operation Desert Storm — the first Gulf War to chase Iraq out of Kuwait in the early 1990s — although he did not participate in that war.
Kirk said his congressional staff erred years ago when they claimed he was the only member of Congress to "serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom," the invasion of Iraq after 9/11, when in fact he served stateside. Kirk noted the statement, on his Web site, was fixed in 2005 when the mistake was discovered.
Kirk acknowledged he overstated his role when he previously said he commanded the Pentagon's war room during one stint of duty. Instead, he said, he was responsible for the intelligence side of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Military Command Center. Another officer was in charge of the armed forces.
Wow, that's a whole lot of “embellishing” for a hawkish Republican, but fits the patterns of GOP politicians who strut like generals, but have never seen combat.
For being another faux GOP “warrior,” Mark Kirk deserves to be named the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the week.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
WASHINGTON -- Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Mark Kirk did not tell the whole story about how he found out his bio had misidentified him as having won a Navy "Intelligence Officer of the Year" award. It turns out the Navy tipped off Kirk's House staff that news outlets were asking questions about his military record.
Last week, Kirk, a commander in the Naval Reserves, said his staff called the false claim to his attention as if they discovered it themselves. What actually happened was that after his staff got the heads-up from the Navy, Kirk's team scrambled a damage-control operation, putting a statement on his website correcting the record before a story came out.
Navy Cmdr. Danny Hernandez told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday that after his office received calls from news outlets "inquiring about [Kirk's] service" -- and who won the Intelligence Officer of the Year Award in 1999 -- the Navy's Office of Legislative Affairs on Capitol Hill was notified so it could pass the information to Kirk's office, and it did. That is a Navy courtesy, Hernandez said, for all congressmen who are the subject of media questions. He said Kirk's office was told that the 1999 winner of the reserve officer's award was Allan Dunlop, a lieutenant commander.
"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.' In fact . . . I was the recipient of the Rufus Taylor Intelligence Unit of the Year award for outstanding support provided during Operation Allied Force," Kirk said in that Web posting. Asked by the Sun-Times on Saturday night what prompted Kirk to make the change, a Kirk spokesman said "we noticed that it was misidentified and we corrected it."
The news about the false claim has put Kirk on the defensive for the first time in his campaign against Democratic nominee Alexi Giannoulias, the state treasurer. Kirk, a Navy reservist since 1989, has made his military record a centerpiece of his Senate campaign.
Kirk has an unusual arrangement with the Pentagon when it comes to serving his reserve duty. "Our regular practice is to not call up for deployment sitting members of Congress who are in the reserves, but we have faced this question a number of times and have made case-by-case exceptions in a few instances, Rep. Kirk being one of them," Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told the Sun-Times.
On the campaign trail and through his career in Congress, Kirk often boasts about his duty in conflict zones, which raises the question of where he served and for how long. The Kirk campaign gave the Sun-Times some details on Tuesday.
Iraq: Kirk, in an electronic intelligence squadron, "flew missions patrolling Iraqi airspace during March and April 2000," when the U.S. was enforcing a no-fly zone.
Afghanistan: Kirk served reserve duty in Kandahar from Dec. 15, 2008, through Jan. 2, 2009. He returned a second time between Dec. 19, 2009, and Jan. 4, 2010.