Military Service
Graham decided to join the United States Air Force in 1982, and served on active duty until 1988. Following his departure he stayed in the military, joining the South Carolina Air National Guard and the U.S. Air Force Reserve. During the Gulf War, he was recalled to active duty, serving as a Judge Advocate at McEntire Air National Guard Station in Eastover, South Carolina, where he helped brief departing pilots on the laws of war. He later transferred from the Air National Guard to the Air Force Reserve.
In 1998, according to the Congressional daily newspaper The Hill, Graham described himself on his website as "an Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran." In reality, he never left South Carolina during the deployment of part of his reserve unit to the Gulf War.
In 2004, Graham received a promotion to Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve at a White House ceremony officiated by President George W. Bush.
Graham served in Iraq as a reservist on active duty for short periods during April and two weeks in August 2007, where he worked on detainee and rule-of-law issues. He also served in Afghanistan during the August 2009 Senate recess.
Through 2010, Graham served as a senior instructor for the Judge Advocate General's Corps, U.S. Air Force.
Read more about this topic: Lindsey Graham
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or service:
“Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)