"In August Vance claimed: “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.” Several former National Guard colleagues have previously publicly voiced frustrations at Walz’s decision to leave their unit before deployment to Iraq but others have rejected assertions that he retired to avoid combat duty. In February 2005, while he was still in the National Guard, Walz filed an application to run for election as a member of Congress from Minnesota. The following month it was announced that there would be “a possible partial mobilisation of roughly 2,000 troops from the Minnesota National Guard” to Iraq within the next two years, according to a 2005 press release from Walz’s congressional campaign. In the statement, Walz said: “I do not yet know if my artillery unit will be part of this mobilisation.” He added: “I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race." Walz retired from the National Guard in May 2005, which he later said was so he could focus fully on running for Congress. His National Guard unit received orders to mobilise for Iraq in July 2005, and was sent there in March 2006, according to the battalion’s history page. On 13 August 2024, Mr Walz responded directly to his critics, recalling that he'd joined the National Guard aged 17: "I served for the next 24 years for the same reason all my brothers and sisters do, we love this country. Then in 2005 I felt the call of duty again, this time giving service to my country in the halls of Congress.""