Amanpour Takes Aim at Hegseth
Christiane Amanpour used X to criticize Secretary of War Pete Hegseth after his remarks at the Pentagon, calling his biblical language wrong and unprecedented. She then said she had once been listed as a major on her Gulf War dog tags, which was meant to land as a jab. Instead, it raised a basic question: since when does a press credential count as military service? In Washington, the answer is usually found in a memo nobody reads and everyone misquotes.
What the ‘Major’ Tag Actually Meant
During the Gulf War, some reporters embedded with U.S. forces were given administrative tags or badges that used military-style ranks for access, housing, and movement. That label was a practical fix, not an actual commission, promotion, or record of service. It was paperwork, not a battlefield award. The system did what systems do best: it created a technical detail and then let people pretend the technical detail meant something bigger. A war zone is not exactly the place for branding exercises, but bureaucracy never met a label it could not overwork.
Veterans Push Back
Retired Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson, a former Air Force pilot and author, said Amanpour’s comparison showed deep ignorance about military rank and service. He argued that Hegseth earned his Army rank through real duty, while Amanpour’s “major” tag was only an access tool for reporters. That is the part the spin crowd likes to blur, because every once in a while a distinction matters. A rank earned in uniform is not the same thing as a tag handed out so a reporter can find the chow hall and the correct checkpoint.
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