When Donald Trump launched his bombing campaign against Iran, Graham Platner, the front-runner in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Maine, returned to a well-worn line to attack the five-term Republican incumbent he hopes to unseat in November.

“@Susan Collins: you voted to send me to Iraq,” Platner said on X last month. “Did you learn anything from that experience?”

Platner has been a vocal critic of the war in Iran, and he’s been reminding voters for months about Collins’ support for the war he fought in.

But Collins voted to authorize the Iraq War in October 2002, so it was well underway in 2004 when Platner chose to enlist in the U.S. Marines with the specific goal of fighting as an infantryman.

Six years ago, Platner wrote about his time in the service in previously unreported, and now-deleted Reddit posts. Platner said he enlisted the Marine Corps to “have an adventure and kill some people.” He called combat “an excellent experience.”

Surveys show veterans often have complicated feelings about the wars they served in. Nearly two-thirds of veterans said the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center report. In the same survey, a strong majority of post-9/11 veterans said they frequently felt proud of their service.

Platner’s journey to war reflects that complexity. He had protested against the war as a teenager, then signed up to fight in it about a year after graduating from John Bapst High School in Bangor. After serving four years and briefly attending college in Washington, D.C., he moved to the Army in 2010 to fight in Afghanistan. And he returned to that country in 2018 for a short stint as a security contractor at the U.S. Embassy.

Platner’s campaign said he was not available for an interview to talk about his Reddit posts on combat. His team responded to a list of posts included in this story by sending screenshots of other comments Platner posted around the same time that were critical of the war and the politicians who approved it. (In one post from 2021, he called the politicians who supported the war “too worthless to define actual goals.”)

And his team offered a statement in which Platner detailed how his feelings about war changed over the years.

“I was a teenager when I enlisted in the Marine Corps. I was searching for a way to serve my country and I had pride in that service,” Platner said in the statement. “But also in the years since, like many veterans, I realized how much we were taken advantage of, and developed a new understanding of war.”

“The passion and willingness to serve that so many young people have are taken advantage of by politicians and people close to power — decade after decade, war after war,” Platner continued. “That should be respected by the politicians like Susan Collins who vote to send us to war — not used like a toy to further their own interests.”

In 2020, Platner, who was 35 at the time, did not appear to have the perspective he has now.

When a Reddit commenter asked in a thread why people enlist in the Marine Corps, Platner responded: “Wanted to have an adventure and kill some people.”

“Joined up in ‘04, did Fallujah and Ramadi,” Platner wrote, using his P-Hustle handle. “Hell of an excellent experience.”

In 2015, Platner responded to a question about whether anyone enjoyed fighting in the war.

“It’s hard to explain how much I enjoyed combat,” Platner wrote. “I was never a huge fan of killing, at least not for killing’s sake, but I did love winning and that required killing.”

In recent weeks, as polls show him pulling away from Gov. Janet Mills in the primary, Platner has faced renewed scrutiny from his opponents, including Mills and the Republicans backing Collins, who point to his past comments as evidence that Platner should not serve in the Senate.

Much of that scrutiny has focused on Platner’s social media posts about women, which were deleted before he announced his run for Senate.

Platner has attributed his controversial comments — for example, 2013 posts dismissing sexual assault and blaming victims — to a dark time in his life. He says they don’t reflect who he is today.

In an interview last year, Platner said his desire to fight in “my generation’s war” was stronger than his political opposition to it. To join up, he said he had to sneak his birth certificate out of the law office of his father, who did not want him to enlist.

Last month, in an interview on the podcast “Office Hours with Tim Heidecker,” Platner was asked if he has regrets about fighting in the war.

“I do,” the candidate said. “We did essentially do our best in a horrible situation.”

Platner said he wanted to be a soldier since he was 2 years old. He said that’s likely because of the way American culture romanticizes war, and because of his own “childish idealism.”

Now, while seeking the Democratic nomination, he’s vociferously opposed to the conflict with Iran and other military action by the Trump administration. And he’s using Iran to mount a political attack on Collins.

“I can tell you my life would be better if I had not had to fight in Ramadi in 2006,” Platner said in a March 22 interview with CNN.