The accusation, such as it is, is that Walz retired from service just before his unit was deployed to Iraq.

The first thing to note here is that career military people can retire. (Walz served for 24 years.) That's how it works. If you're needed, there's something called stop-loss orders, which the Pentagon issues during periods of acute need; they not only prevent retirements but can involuntarily extend people's period of enlistment. These were issued repeatedly during the Iraq War and in the years of active U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

Walz successfully ran for Congress in 2006 and there's abundant evidence that at least from early 2005 he was discussing with confidants in his unit whether or not to retire to run for Congress. His newly announced campaign put out a press release in March 2005 which said that it was possible that "all or a portion of Walz's battalion could be mobilized to serve in Iraq within the next two years." Walz officially retired in May 2005 and his unit got initial call up orders in July 2005. They were eventually deployed to Iraq in March 2006.

The overriding point here is that Walz didn't just say, well, I might get deployed. I'm outta here. It is well-documented that he was already planning to run for Congress, had been discussing with fellow guardsmen for some time whether he would retire as part of his plans to run for Congress and in fact had already announced his run months before he retired. I don't know the exact regulations. But I'm pretty sure National Guarding isn't the kind of thing where you put in two weeks notice. There's a fairly elaborate process for retirement. He officially retired in May 2005. I would imagine he had to start that process months before.

I'm not surprised the Trump campaign is going there. I mean, they're vicious degenerates and professional liars. But even more generally, campaigns put out lots of tendentious attacks. But we should expect a lot better from the country's leading dailies, especially charges directly from a campaign that contain so many red flags. Once a major paper picks up a hit and gives it credulous coverage it stops being a campaign attack and becomes a "story." It's a very specific kind of editorial decision.