Sen. Tom Cotton Bragged He Was an ‘Army Ranger.’ He Was Not Peter Wade Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the infamous author of the New York Times op-ed calling for troops to break up Black Lives Matter protests, has lied about details of his military service, according to an investigation by Cotton, who first ran for Congress in 2012, claimed during that campaign that he had served as “a U.S. Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan” and “volunteered to be an Army Ranger.” But, Sollenberger uncovered, Cotton never was an Army Ranger, he only attended the Army’s two-month Ranger School. Attending that training let him wear a tab on his arm that says “Ranger,” but that did not qualify him as a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Army’s elite special operations force.