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The military record of a hawk

 
A “battle-tested leader’’?
A “battle-tested leader’’?
Published Aug. 3, 2015

Of all the candidates vying to become the nation's next commander in chief, none has spent as much time in the military as Sen. Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican retired from the Air Force this summer after a 33-year career as a military lawyer, including two decades as a reservist while serving in Congress. Graham is running as a national-security hawk, calling himself a "battle-tested leader." But the Washington Post reports that a detailed examination of Graham's military record — much of it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — tells another story. Among the Post's findings:

After he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1994, Graham was designated by the Air Force Reserve as a "key federal employee," a category for a small number of lawmakers and senior government officials. Over the next 10 years, he rarely put on his uniform, receiving credit for just 108 hours of training — the equivalent of less than a day and a half per year. The Air Force, however, kept awarding him promotions, eventually to colonel.

From 2006 until the start of this year, Graham's official biographies stated that he worked as a senior instructor at the Judge Advocate General's School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, the training hub for the service's legal corps. In fact, he never taught courses there.

Although Graham describes himself as battle-tested, there is no evidence he has ever been in combat. A Defense Department policy prohibits legislator-reservists from serving in war zones or "imminent danger areas," but the Air Force agreed to let Graham deploy for unusually brief tours — between two days and two weeks — when it suited his schedule. He would travel to Iraq or Afghanistan with a congressional delegation, then stay to perform his military service. "Nobody who was in the war-zone billets who were doing (legal) work in Baghdad ever knew what he did," a lawyer, who is still on active duty and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, told the Post.

In 1998, Graham referred to himself in his Senate biography as "an Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield veteran." Although Graham was called to active duty with the National Guard, he was never deployed overseas during the Persian Gulf War. He stayed in South Carolina, where he prepared wills for those going into combat.

Interviewed by the Post, Graham said that his legislative duties left him little time to devote to his military career. "I think Colonel Graham did a pretty good job, quite frankly, given the constraints of my day job, my ability in terms of time," he said.

Under Air Force regulations, Graham had to retire by the age of 60. He will receive a monthly pension of $2,773.