Category: Dumbass Bullshit

We wrote about Joseph Hunter three years ago when he was arrested. We’ve been trying to get his FOIA ever since to verify his claims with no luck thus far. Anyway, he was sentenced to twenty years the other day for planning the assassination of a federal agent and an informant according to Reuters;

During a sting operation, Hunter, at Le Roux’s request, assembled a team of former soldiers to provide security to DEA informants posing as Colombian drug traffickers, according to court papers.

Hunter’s mercenary squad used Thailand as its base and performed several tasks in 2013, including assisting a purported 300-kilogram cocaine transaction in the Bahamas, prosecutors said.

For $800,000, Hunter and two ex-soldiers, Dennis Gogel of Germany and former U.S. Army Sergeant Timothy Vamvakias, also agreed to assassinate a DEA agent and an agency source in Liberia, prosecutors said.

I guess they have more evidence that he has organized other contract killings around the world. He talks like he found the Lord during his wait for sentencing;

Hunter…apologized in court, saying he would still be with his family “if I only asked myself what God would have wanted me to do.”

Funny how they always see the Light after they get to prison.

So let’s get these stories out of the way before the actual Memorial Day begins. In Seattle, some grown ups tore up a flower bed that formed a Purple Heart;

[Ernie Crediford 67, of Richland] got the idea for the plant bed while he was hiking Badger Mountain on Memorial Day several years ago. He noticed purple sage, which is in bloom around the holiday, and the striking color reminded him of the military medal.

“I grew up in the Vietnam era. It’s affected me in a lot of ways,” Crediford said. “I have a lot of friends who were wounded in the war.”

Crediford said the plan is to replant purple sage in the 15-by-15-foot heart, though that will have to wait until fall for the climate to be right.

In Anniston, Alabama;

“This is hallowed ground to me, it always has been,” said [Ken Rollins], who spent 12 years helping to build the memorial. “It’s no different than Arlington Cemetery. The things you wouldn’t do to your grandmama’s grave, we shouldn’t do here.”

Rollins was disgusted to find out the small American flags lining the park for Memorial Day were trashed once again.

“I came up yesterday and they was all, no flags, no flags to be seen, just the big one flying. And all the other flags, the sticks were broken and placed in a pile. The flags nowhere to be found,” he said.

This broken pile of sticks is all that’s left of the American flags that were put up earlier this week. But come Memorial Day, Rollins said there will be more than 200 surrounding the park.

In Venice, California;

In Henderson, Kentucky;

A Henderson man has been arrested after he allegedly damaged more than 150 crosses in the downtown Memorial Day cross display with his vehicle early Saturday, according to officials.

According to Henderson Police Public Information Officer Jennifer Richmond, Anthony Burrus, 27, was arrested in connection with the incident that took place in Central Park at around 6 a.m. Roughly 160 crosses were knocked down and about 20 were destroyed.

The vehicle Burrus was driving, a 1979 Ford Thunderbird, was found with pieces of a cross and ground stake embedded in the tires after he left it at the McDonald’s restaurant on South Green Street. Richmond said Burrus denied causing the damage in the park, but confirmed he was driving the vehicle earlier this morning and left it after it stopped working.

In Wales, New York;

[Police] say sometime on Sunday or Monday someone stole a historic flag from this monument at Bogucki Town Park on Route 20A. They also damaged the wood carving.

In Brockway, Pennsylvania;

“They called me and said, ‘Have you been down to see the park theater?’” [Bob] Stowman said. “I thought maybe they did something to enhance it. I came down, and I was totally disgusted when I saw it.”

Stowman showed the offensive language carved into the wood, countless holes and cracks from BB gun pellets and the dented and broken doors, some of which were pried open.

He said it will cost thousands of dollars to fix the damage and resurface the wood.

In West Carrollton, Ohio;

More than 20 gravestones were knocked over at the Evergreen Cemetery in West Carrollton on Wednesday.

Several of them were decorated veterans. However, one man is emerging as a hero out of the situation. Jerry Richards, the owner of Richards Monuments is repairing the grave sites for free.

“We’re not going to charge for this. It’s close to Memorial Day. So, we try to help the families out. It’s a terrible thing to happen,” said Richards.

Stay classy, you dickless turds.

There is this guy who calls himself Joe Anan. Clearly, looking at the name tag in the picture above, that wasn’t his real name. I’ve seen his BS floating around social media for several months in several of the groups that I monitor – one is the group of the Infantry Battalion that I served with in Desert Storm – 1st Battalion 41st Infantry of the 2nd Armored Division (Forward). This fellow (whatever his name is) claims that we left him out in the desert to fend for himself for three months after Desert Storm. He took his fantasy to The Guardian that was more than happy to print his BS. His claim is that he was assigned to our Support Battalion. After Desert Storm, we ran a screen between the Iraqi Army and the fleeing Shi’ites. Some of our companies built refugee camps for the Shi’ites. ANyway, here are snippets of “Joe’s” story;

Then word reached us that a soldier in the Rafha refugee camp run by the US army, in northern Saudi Arabia, needed help: he’d been operating a fork lift for weeks and was desperate for a break. It was only for three days, so I offered to cover.

We flew there in a helicopter and, as I climbed out, the guy I was replacing ran past me and jumped in, saying, “See you, buddy!” Three days later, there was no sign of him. I couldn’t check where he was with my superiors, because I had no walkie-talkie or mobile. Everything in the military is on a need-to-know basis, so I didn’t question it – I was 22 at the time.

Who calls them “walkie-talkies”? Anyway, he claims that he had a few months of MREs, a forklift and a tanker full of fuel. Initially, he was a few hundred yards from a two thousand man unit (yeah, that’s about the size of an infantry battalion) led by a single lieutenant. One morning “Joe” woke up and they were all gone – he hadn’t heard two thousand people leaving in the middle of the night.

So, Joe, where did the refugees go? That was the reason that we were in Rafha – to house Iraqi refugees. By the way, Joe, Rafha is in Saudi Arabia, not Kuwait, no wonder you were lost.

Anyway, he claims that he had enough fuel that for three months he went out driving his forklift looking for American units. Until one fateful day;

One morning, I was out driving and thought I saw a sandstorm coming, but knew that it was far too early. I swerved to the left of it and drove as fast as I could.

Then I realised [sic] it was a convoy of trucks with two tanks. One fired a warning shot at me, but I kept going. As they got closer, a man shouted, “Man, where the hell did you come from?” I said, “I’ll tell you, just get me out of here first!”

Tanks just drive around the desert firing warning shots at anything that moves, I guess. I didn’t know that tanks had “warning shot” rounds. And what’s that BS about being “too early” for a sandstorm? I didn’t know they only happened at certain times of day.

It turned out I’d lost track of time: they told me it was May; I’d been alone for three months.

Eventually, I rejoined my unit in northern Germany. When I stepped through the door, one of the guys fell to the floor in amazement – he thought he’d seen a ghost. Most of them thought I had died.

I was still in Saudi Arabia in May, too – I’d stayed behind to ship our Bradleys back to Germany when our humanitarian mission had ended, but I’d never heard anything about Joe Lost Boy being found.

No one has taken responsibility for abandoning me, and there was no investigation. So much for the army adage, “We never leave a soldier behind.” I originally joined the army because I had been abused as a child, and I wanted to prove to myself no one could hurt me again, and that I could protect people. I now know no one can break me, but I will never get over feeling utterly abandoned.

On his Facebook page, he claims that he’s finding proof that his Lieutenant left him behind on purpose as “an act of revenge” for something. Sounds plausible – the Army doesn’t have layers of records to track personnel. They can just drive off and leave them.

Even if they did want to leave him to die, some clerk would have gotten antsy about a forklift and a tanker truck that was with him, wouldn’t they? That’s accountable property that someone would have to pay for.

Of course, now he’s saying that he was only missing for three weeks, not three months, you know because our group is calling BS on him in contradiction to what he told The Guardian. I saw a lot of stupid BS go on in 1/41, the 498th Support Battalion and 2d AD, but I would never accuse them of leaving a private in the desert to fend for himself. I have no proof that it didn’t happen, but he doesn’t any proof that it did happen either.

So, now he’s claiming that he went back to Garlstedt with 1/41 Infantry rear detachment that shipped their Bradley fighting vehicles back to Germany after the war. i was the NCOIC of that detail and he wasn’t attached to us. After that lie was exposed, he said he was attached to a Marine Corps unit guarding their swimming pool. The Marines wouldn’t let the Army use their swimming pool because we wouldn’t give them a detail to clean up after them – and we weren’t there to swim.

While you’re wasting your time off tomorrow afternoon getting a safety briefing from your commander, think of Taylor Patterson, a Fort Hood soldier who was found by Harker Heights, Texas local police unresponsive in his car. They put the young soldier in cuffs and strapped him into their patrol car. Somehow, Patterson got loose from the seatbelt and cuffs and tried to steal the patrolmen’s shotgun, discharging it in the process. Then he jumped in an ambulance that had responded and left the scene, damaging some of the cruisers in the process. From KWTX 10;

Police scanners crackled with radio calls during the chase as the driver of the stolen ambulance was talking with the officers who were pursuing him.

He told them he was heavily armed and had been trained by the Army as a Special Forces soldier.

The man drove east on U.S. 190 to Belton, where eventually he lost control of the ambulance, which crashed into a light pole at the Simmons Street exit, police said.

I checked the TO&E of the 615th Aviation Support Battalion, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, the unit Patterson is assigned to, and they don’t have any Special Forces soldiers, so I seriously doubt his claim. Those of you with AKO access can probably fill in some blanks about his duty position.

Thanks to Top Kone for the links.

The Intercept, Glen Greenwald’s attempt at journalism, has, for some reason, entered the Stolen Valor realm, digging into Chris Kyle’s records. They seem to have uncovered the fact that he has fewer valor medals than he has claimed.

“All told,” Kyle wrote in his book, “I would end my career as a SEAL with two Silver Stars and five Bronze [Stars], all for valor.”

[…]

But Kyle…embellished his military record, according to internal Navy documents obtained by The Intercept. During his 10 years of military service and four deployments, Kyle earned one Silver Star and three Bronze Stars with Valor, a record confirmed by Navy officials.

They supply us with his DD214;

The DD214 says that Kyle earned 2 Silver Star Medals and 5 Bronze Star Medals (all with a “Valor” device that distinguishes the BSMs from a meritorious version), so Kyle used the count that was on his DD214. The Intercept says that they could only find one record for a Silver Star and three Bronze Stars. They also claim that Kyle knew about the discrepancy – but there it is on his DD214.

I’m wondering, what’s the point? It’s not like he’s likely to wear his uniform to get a free mocha latte at Starbucks, or a free blooming onion at Outback Steak House. So, who is the stolen valor expert they dig up about this?

Retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, a military historian, said that public reports of stolen valor became more common in the decade after the Vietnam War. Bateman also said it was inexcusable that Kyle, or any other veteran, would inflate his record, even if the veteran, like Kyle, had demonstrated clear heroism during his service.

Résumé inflation may be less of a scandal for civilians, Bateman said, but for those in the military “some elements are paid in blood.”

Yeah, Bob Bateman, the least infantryman in the world.

This is just like the CSM Plumley discussion. I guess the media will only attack dead people. The Intercept wouldn’t publish an article about a certain Bethesda government contractor who was using his wife’s political influence to get government business, but they’ll pick on a dead SEAL and authentic American hero. Way to pick your battles, Glen.

Added: Bateman called and said I should have this quoted the second paragraph so I’m adding it;

Résumé inflation may be less of a scandal for civilians, Bateman said, but for those in the military “some elements are paid in blood.”

He also said that he advised the author of the story to talk to the records clerk that typed the DD214, but they didn’t bother to follow his advice.

We’ve all seen them here at TAH – folks who defend even our worst frauds. There’s an Army sergeant major among our readers who vouches for a phony POW, even though that sergeant major wasn’t in the Army when this guy claims that he was a POW of the Vietnamese. Wives vouch for their husbands’ service decades before they knew the fraud. Yes, even Jesse MacBeth has a believer, Captain Eric May, who, despite the fact that MacBeth went to jail for his lies, thinks MacBeth was a Ranger in Iraq.

There are people like “Wayward” Bill Chengelis who distort history with their wild-ass tales, and his supporters still defend him and believe him despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Chengelis said as a company clerk in Vietnam, his job was to account for the dead enemy soldiers by cutting off their ears and collecting them, I guess because a ledger was too hard to keep updated. But, that’s his reason for advocating marijuana use to treat his PTSD from his Vietnam service – he was actually a company clerk in Germany during the Vietnam War.

People like the video of Tom Bruso beating a punk’s ass on a bus so much, they still call him a Vietnam veteran, even though he was booted from the Army after a few weeks of basic training. He has a long history of substance abuse that he blames on his non-existent service in Vietnam. This is from a Facebook comment on that post the other day;

To the guy who said three months was long enough for him to goto Nam, yea, it was. You forget most of these Draftee’s were forced through a 7 week bootcamp, because Gov needed more fodder.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune exposed the phony POW/MIA flag designer, William Grahame Wilkin III, who sort of finally admitted maybe it wasn’t true. Denise Crosby, the journalist, went to talk to state Representative Linda Chapa LaVia, the delegate to the Illinois legislature who honored Wilkin’s phony accomplishment on the floor of that body. The Democrat representative of Aurora, Illinois still believes that there’s a chance that Wilkin did design the flag – 11 years after the National League of POW/MIA Families adopted the logo design.

Chapa LaVia says she throws her support behind Aurora Christian’s Grahame Wilkin because she knows the kind of person he is: not only “a brilliant artist,” but also a “strong Christian who has done so much for his students and the community.”

While Heisley’s name blankets the Internet, with groups like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and National League of POW/MIA Families recognizing the late World War II veteran, who died in 2009, as the flag’s designer, Chapa LaVia says after looking at the evidence, she is convinced it is possible “two people could have produced” the same logo.

[…]

“Who says there could not be two similar designs that were drawn,” Chapa LaVia insisted, her words echoing those of Wilkin himself last week as he struggled “to wrap my head around” the overwhelming evidence supporting the logo’s design by Heisley more than a decade before the art contest he entered in high school.

The only reason that I busted Wilkin was to keep the story of the creation of the logo historically accurate, to give credit to Newt Heisley, the actual designer and a World War II veteran, for his legacy. These enablers like LaVia sully that legacy because they won’t admit their mistakes, or their politics or biases get in the way of their good judgement.

Last week, we wrote about William Grahame Wilkin III and the strange story that he claimed to create the POW/MIA flag eleven years after it was actually created. Wilkin had been honored in the Illinois Legislature and on the floor of the US House of Representatives for his bogus accomplishment. Well Denise Crosby and the Chicago Tribune picked up the story today.

After being presented with irrefutable evidence that Heisley was the creator of the logo, he issued a public mea culpa and says he will be returning the plaques from both the Illinois House of Representatives and Congress.

“With deep sadness in my heart, I apologize for not realizing this image already existed,” he said in a written statement released Thursday afternoon. “I would never disrespect or misrepresent our military. Nor would I intentionally steal from another artist. I now believe my work was unknowingly inspired by the original POW/MIA flag designed by Newton Heisley in 1971….”

He needed evidence, I guess.

In a candid and at times tearful interview the day before, Wilkin insisted there was nothing deceptive about his actions. Up until this week, Wilkin said he truly believed he had designed the logo and that the recognition he was finally starting to get for it a few years ago was “a burden off my back.”

He says he kept quiet about his part in designing the logo until a staff meeting at Aurora Christian School a few years ago in which he shared a devotional with teachers that included how his POW/MIA logo was based on the Apostle Paul’s writing while incarcerated.

He also kept quiet long enough for the real designer, Newt Heisley, to die in 2009 at the age of 88. Heisley was a pilot in World War II, so yeah, Wilkins stole part of Heisley’s legacy for no good reason.

Wilkin, who is no longer part of Aurora’s Veterans Week activities, says he’s still trying to reconcile these facts with the way he recalls things playing out so many years ago.

“I am OK with the truth,” he said. “The whole point is to respect and honor the military … and to say I’m sorry.”

What a sweet guy to accept the truth and facts.

One of our ninjas send us this article about William Grahame Wilkin III (he’s so important, he needs two Facebook pages); ‘Forgotten’ POW/MIA logo creator satisfied with losing the battle, but winning the war (the article was yanked today);

Wilkin will be the guest speaker at the Vets Week kickoff at 5 p.m. Monday, May 23, in the atrium of the Richard and Gina Santori Public Library of Aurora, 101 S. River St. He will present the meaning behind the POW/MIA Fallen Comrade table that will be on display.

Wilkin entered an art contest sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a Glenbard South High School junior in 1983. His entry wasn’t the winner, but his design did go on to become the highly-recognizable image on the black and white flags that fly on flagpoles across the country. How it happened, he doesn’t really know.

His third-place artwork was, unbeknown to him, appropriated for use on the POW/MIA flag. Congress voted to make it an official flag of the United States in the late 1980s.

“They took the drawing and they cleaned it up, because it was high school work,” Wilkin said. “I put ‘I Believe They Are Still Alive’ on it. They changed it to ‘We Will Never Forget’.”

But someone did forget to tell Wilkin that it was his design that eventually became one of the most recognizable logos in the country.

Maybe William’s contribution was forgotten because the flag was designed 11 years before he says that he first drew it, according to Wikipedia;

The original design for the flag was created by Newt Heisley in 1972. The National League of Families then-national coordinator, POW wife Evelyn Grubb, oversaw its development and also campaigned to gain its widespread acceptance and use by the United States government and also local governments and civilian organizations across the United States

I guess it was too tough for the author, Amy Roth or the public library to do a simple Wiki search. Newt Heisley, the real designer of the flag died in 2009 at the age of 88.

Wilkin has been at this scam for a while;