Category: Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

And Stars & Stripes‘ Leo Shane didn’t today when he wrote a mostly fawning piece on Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and their executive director Paul Rieckhoff today. But waaaaaaayyyyy down the literary handjob;

His high profile makes Rieckhoff an easy target.

Earlier this summer, the military blog This Ain’t Hell uncovered a photo of Rieckhoff from a 2004 Amherst College alumni magazine interview, showing him wearing a Bronze Star and a Special Forces unit patch.

The site — a frequent critic of IAVA — accused him of being a military fraud and a hypocrite in light of IAVA’s support of Stolen Valor laws. Others detractors followed suit.

Rieckhoff defended the medal as a paperwork mistake (it’s listed on some of his personnel paperwork, but not others). He asked for clarification from the Army on the status of the award, but received none. He bought his Bronze Star after being told he had earned the medal, but hasn’t worn it since that interview.

He blames the Special Forces patch on bad timing and enthusiasm. He sewed on the patch days after receiving an assignment to the unit, but pulled it off a few weeks later when that assignment changed. The magazine picture appeared in that small window of time.

That’s not typical procedure, especially for Special Forces. Some critics cried foul, but many just rolled their eyes.

“Would I do something like that? No way,” said another veterans advocate, who asked to remain anonymous. “But if it was anyone but Paul doing this, I’m not sure it would be a big deal.”

Yeah, well, Mr. Bravely Anonymous, it’s a big deal everyday at TAH, no matter who it is. If it had been me, or one of our friends, Rieckhoff and his minions would be crawling up our ass with a microscope. But see, here’s my whole thing; how did the medal get on his DD214 when no orders or citation exist? Rieckhoff signed his DD214, so he was in the room when the clerk typed it up. Did the clerk just think he deserved a Bronze Star? This wasn’t just a paperwork SNAFU. It wasn’t a case of the orders not following him to his next unit. There are no orders.

Sorry, but this just pisses me off that no one else sees this the way I see it. I also noticed that Stars & Stripes completely neglected to mention that Rieckhoff’s first veterans’ organization was OpTruth – nothing more than IVAW in suits. They had Jesse Ventura, VoteVets’ Wesley Clark and Code Pink’s Ann Wright on their board of directors and they were strictly an anti-Bush, anti-war organization. IAVA grew out of that now-dissipated brainfart.

It’s not Rieckhoff’s “high profile” that makes him a target, it’s his hypocrisy that makes him a target. But thanks to Stars & Stripes for giving me this opportunity to address the reasons for my opposition to Rieckhoff in the days preceding the much-anticipated IAVA scorecard which will undoubtedly favor Democrats over Republicans in the upcoming election. I get an opportunity to remind people why they should disregard IAVA’s “non-partisan” tag.

You probably remember the discussion about poor Paul Rieckhoff who was wearing a Bronze Star Medal he was never awarded to an interview for pictures at his alma mater. Well, he’s nearly in tears about it in the Military Times (sorry, I don’t link to them anymore because their senior editor, Tobias Naegele is a cowardly, backstabbing pussy) because the Army never gave him his orders;

Bronze Star snafu reveals valor system flaw

By Andrew Tilghman – Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jul 23, 2012 7:13:12 EDT

It’s been more than eight years since former Army 1st Lt. Paul Rieckhoff returned from Iraq — and he’s still not sure whether the Army awarded him a Bronze Star.

In 2004, his command told him he would be awarded the medal for meritorious service. When he left the Army that year, the medal was clearly listed on his DD 214 discharge form.

But he said he never received an official citation or saw the orders confirming the medal. And despite repeated phone calls, the Army was never able to clarify what happened with the follow-up documentation.

“My paperwork is screwed up, no doubt about that. And I’m sure I’m not the only one,” Rieckhoff said in a recent interview.

Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, is not a guy you’d expect to be stonewalled by the military’s bureaucracy.
[…]

For Rieckhoff, the question hit home recently when he was accused by bloggers of improperly wearing the Bronze Star in a 2004 photo taken for his college alumni magazine.

Rieckhoff said the photo was taken during the brief period before he began to have concerns about the award’s documentation. He notes that he no longer wears the award or claims publicly to have earned it. His official bio on the IAVA website makes no mention of a Bronze Star.

[…]

Yeah, well, the article doesn’t address the fact that there were no orders for the medal, it wasn’t on his NGB Form 22, Report of Separation and Record of Service and yet it still showed up on his DD214 somehow. How would a clerk know to put it on the DD214 without any orders or citation? Are clerks just psychic about that stuff? And Rieckhoff signed his discharge, so it’s not like he couldn’t have any answers about how it got there. And I guess the Special Forces unit patch he was wearing in the picture doesn’t even get a mention.

I’m not surprised that Military Times won’t ask Rieckhoff the hard questions a journalist should ask so they can properly inform the public, in this case members of the military, they’re the product of their cowardly, backstabbing, punk-ass, sissy senior editor, Tobias Naegele.

Apparently, someone is interceding in this little battle between Paul Rieckhoff and reality, so I feel it’s incumbent on myself to provide this interloper with all of the facts. I tried to post as little of Paul’s file on the internet as possible because it seemed that he was not too receptive to that. I’m not a completely heartless being. But, Rieckhoff’s minions are bringing this down on him.

Here’s his citation for his Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM) for merit during his tour of Iraq. Notice the dates which span his service there; April 5, 2003 through January 28, 2004;

Now look at the dates on his DD214 for his service in Iraq in the last line in Block 18; April 4, 2003 through January 31, 2004;

Now, if you look at his letter, he says that his Bronze Star Medal (BSM) was awarded effective March 17, 2004. Since the Bronze Star is for merit and can only be awarded for service against an armed enemy, and since the ARCOM was already awarded for his entire service in Iraq, unless the BSM was awarded for the last three days of service in Iraq not covered by the ARCOM, it makes no sense that his unit would have given him the BSM for the same period for which they awarded the ARCOM, because a BSM for merit is just a super-ARCOM.

Now, the Army might have decided to upgrade the ARCOM to a BSM, but then the ARCOM wouldn’t be on his DD214, yet there it is and there’s the citation for the ARCOM. Rieckhoff admits that he’s never seen orders or a citation for the BSM.

And Michael Yon is going to defend Rieckhoff against my charges. Michael Yon doesn’t understand anything about awards, either. He spent only 4 years and 11 months in the Army (how much did you understand with a couple of years of service?) and none of it in combat and more than two years of that was as a student (yeah, I have Yon’s records, too). So when you read Yon’s defense of Rieckhoff tomorrow, remember that Yon’s experience in the matter is non-existent, since he’s never had to deal with combat awards.

But Yon is getting involved just so he can raise money again in a war against the Milkooks. But none of my fellow Milkooks so much as linked to the post I did on Rieckhoff. So, it’s just me, Mikey, all on my lonesome. Give me your worst. I guess he’s hoping for some of that IAVA money, because those Thai hookers ain’t comin’ cheap for a fat, old bald guy.

I’m sure you all know Paul Rieckhoff, the Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Paul and I have been sparring since they published their first “non-partisan” scorecard before the last Presidential election that was scored so that then-Senator Obama was a better friend of veterans than Senator McCain, you know, the veteran in the race. So there may be some personal bias in this particular bit of reportage, and I’ll readily admit to it.

But, anyway, I found this article taken from Rieckhoff’s alma mater newspaper at Amherst College, but here’s a screen shot of the part where he’s telling the reporter that he was going to Special Forces in the last paragraph of this shot;

Yeah, that’s no problem, really, and here’s the picture that accompanied the article;

Notice the Special Forces unit patch on his left shoulder, which would mean that he was assigned to a Special Forces unit, right? Well, I have a copy of all of his assignment orders and none of them assign him to a Special Forces unit…anywhere. Now stay with me. His orders indicate that he was assigned to A Co. of the 105th Infantry Battalion in Leeds, NY when that interview was done in April, 2004 and published in the summer. His next assignment was to A Co. 108th Infantry Battalion, the orders were dated January 2005 and effective November 2004 two months after the interview.

In this picture, Paul is wearing a Bronze Star Medal;

Actually, his BSM is on his DD214, but, unlike his other awards, I couldn’t find his citation or orders for the medal and it doesn’t show up in his 2-1, which doesn’t mean anything, really, because, unless you ride those clerks, stuff doesn’t get put in;

But, it makes me wonder how the BSM got on his DD214 without it being in his 2-1. It also doesn’t appear on his Report of Separation and Record of Service (NGB-22) which is dated June 30, 2010;

Now I did find his end-of-tour award for his service in Iraq. It was an Army Commendation Medal (ARCOM) and for service from April 2003 to January 2004 – the dates that match his deployment dates to Iraq according to his DD214. It seems strange to me that he’d get an ARCOM and a BSM for Merit for the same combat tour.

But, see this is all questions, and I don’t like unanswered questions. And since I don’t like doing anything behind anyone’s back, I sent all of my questions along with the accumulated documentation to Paul and asked him about the discrepancies I found and asked him to fill in the blanks.

He promptly replied, but his letter only made me have more unanswered questions;

He said in the letter that he intended to go to 19th SFG, but after talking with the commander they both decided that he shouldn’t. So who sews a unit patch on their uniform before they’re even assigned to the unit? I don’t think I ever changed patches until I signed in to a unit. Maybe that’s just me, though.

The DD214 does clearly say he has a Bronze Star Medal, but how did he get it? I asked him for orders, but he sent me the DD214 that I already had and then he claimed he never received the citation, but he doesn’t mention the orders. So did someone call him and tell him he had one, and he just pinned it on? And how did it get on his DD214 without orders or a citation? And he physically signed his DD214, so they didn’t have him digitally sign it from a distance. He was right there in the room with the clerk.

In his letter, he writes; “Since the photo in question, I have not worn or claimed the BSM—as you have noted.” Yeah, that’s the only photo I could find of him with the BSM, so if he’s so sure that he earned a BSM, why did he stop wearing it after that picture? See what I mean by more questions?

And, oh, yeah, if you want to get on my good side, Paul, you probably shouldn’t threaten me with lawyers in the first paragraph. Or the last paragraph. Or any of the paragraphs in between. Here at TAH we operate within the limits of the law and everything that we accumulated was done within those limits. I got the records from the usual source – Mary at POW Network. She’ll verify that. And there is no grand conspiracy against you, Paul, just little old me and my ten nimble fingers. And, oh, my lawyer.

Now, I don’t understand why Rieckhoff felt a need to dress up for his school newspaper. He has a CIB, a combat patch and a perfectly honorable combat tour in Iraq. I admire him for his service, but the rest of this stuff that he’s done since he’s come back kind of overshadows that stuff he did in Iraq.

So we’ve been reading the emails between the IAVA and members of Congress from IAVA’s little peckerhead twerp, Tom Tarantino, who is threatening to score their scorecard this year before the elections solely on the passage of S.2116, which is being called the “Military and Veterans Education Protection Act“. The IAVA calls it “Protecting the GI Bill“, but that’s not what it does – it actually limits your choices for the schools you can attend with your GI Bill money. According to Tarantino;

The 90-10 rule was created to allow the free market to regulate for-profit schools by preventing them from being entirely government funded. Its predecessor (the 85-15 rule) helped prevent abuses to the WWII GI Bill and we must take a stand now to protect the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

The 90-10 rule says that 90% of revenue for a for-profit school can come from government funds. Due to a loophole in the law, military and veterans benefits fall in the 10% of revenue that is supposed to come from private sources. This puts a target on every veteran’s back. Every veteran that a for-profit school recruits is worth nine more students using federal financial aid.

Actually, government intrusion has absolutely nothing to do with “the free market”, any small ‘r’ republican can tell you that within the first minute of ECON 101. What I’ve been confused about in regards to IAVA is that seems that they’re sending mixed messages about the post-9/11 GI Bill. When there was a Republican in the White House and they were trying to get their Democrat candidate elected, Paul Rieckhoff and Tom Tarantino were in a big rush to get the bill passed with no discussion in the Congress over the bill. When Republicans expressed concerns about it and wanted to edit the bill, the IAVA attacked them and then in the 2008 elections scored their “scorecard” solely on the passage of that bill, which stacked their approval of candidates towards members of Congress who had spent two years trying to screw the troops, except on this single issue.

As soon as the bill was passed, and their guy won the election, Rieckhoff tried to get Congress to put caps on your education benefit, because more people applied for funds than they thought and funding became untenable – one of the points Republicans made before the bill passed and one of the things Rieckhoff and company didn’t want discussed.

Now Tarantino is threatening to do the same on S.2116. This from an email with which he “carpetbombed” (to use his word) Congress with a threat to score against them if they didn’t support this choice-limiting bill;

Time is running out on the 112th Congress and we must act now to ensure that veterans are able to safely use their GI Bill to receive the quality job training that they have earned.

Stand with us and cosponsor S. 2116. Cosponsorship and votes on S. 2116 will likely be scored on IAVA’s 2012 Congressional Report Card.

But, see the bill was just fine back in 2008, when IAVA wanted everyone to think they had an actual purpose and wielded some influence in Congress, and now they want to duct-tape and chicken wire the bill together with piecemeal amendments instead of doing it right the first time. First they wanted to limit your choices by capping the amount of the benefit, and now they want to tell you where you can go to school. And they’re threatening to use their false press to do it.

Luckily, GovTrack predicts that the bill has only a 36% chance of passing.