Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who is running for retiring Senator Jeff Flake's seat, is defending her record on support of the military despite her past criticisms of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and her belief in a conspiracy theory about why the wars were fought.

The Hill:

Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) is defending her support for the armed forces after a CNN investigation uncovered her past criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The flyers, first reported by a K-File investigation, were created by a group Sinema co-founded to protest the two wars and sharply criticized the Bush administration and U.S. policy in the Middle East. 

One flyer depicts a U.S. soldier as a skeleton marching against protesters.

"This is not about the United States doing the right and moral thing by a toppling an evil dictator," she said during a local news interview in 2004. "This is more about the United States having access to the oil and the power and control and world stature that it's seeking. It's not about the individuals in Iraq."

Rhetoric on the posters and in Sinema's interview, which largely remains aimed at the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, seems to contradict Sinema's congressional record and her public stance as a moderate and member of the Blue Dog Democrats.

Sinema's campaign spokeswoman Helen Hare told The Hill in an email that Sinema "did not review or approve the flyers." The campaign also pointed to several statements from Sinema explaining that the protests were to "respect and honor" lives lost as a result of the wars.

"This is to respect and honor those who would be killed. We want those lives to not be sacrificed," she said in 2003, according to The Arizona Republic.

Honoring the dead is one thing. Touting a conspiracy theory that makes the military a tool of big oil companies is quite another. 

Should 15 year old anti-war statements be relevant in the 2018 senate campaign? Considering that her statements then are totally at odds with what she says now, yes. She has never acknowledged any kind of "conversion" or change of heart. She simply reinvented herself by making up a fake personnae totally at odds with the truth.

The people of Arizona are going to have to decide how much weight to give her past when casting their votes. I suspect that many will wonder what her true beliefs are and. given her radical past, whether she can believed when she claims the status of "moderate."