Category: Media

Bobo sends us a link to the San Jose Mercury-News which tells the story of the final moments of Joseph Jeremy Weber’s life when he threatened police officers with a knife. The police had responded to his robbery of a liquor store in Sunnyvale, CA.

The man shot and killed by police after wielding a knife during a liquor-store robbery last week was an Army veteran reportedly dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, authorities said.

[…]

[P]olice say the suspect moved toward Officer Benjamin Kroutil while holding a knife, prompting the 13-year police veteran to open fire, striking and wounding him. Joseph Jeremy Weber later died at the hospital.
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The confrontation was preceded by a 911 call about 11 a.m. reporting a robbery where a man took a pack of cigarettes at knifepoint from a clerk at Grewalz Liquor & Groceries at 1125 Tasman Drive. Kroutil was the first officer on scene, and he confronted the suspect in the alley.

Well, I’m pretty sure that PTS doesn’t make people steal cigarettes, and since it comes from witnessing traumatic events, it’s not likely that someone suffering from it would cause another traumatic event. The photo of Weber seems to be a mugshot, so he has probably been in trouble with the police before. I’m sure there are other things besides PTS at work here.

Not newsworthy – thousands of veterans afflicted with PTS didn’t steal cigarettes or threaten police with a knife last week. I’d like to see the media explain that, though.

Chief Tango sent us a link to an article by Jason Noble at the Des Moines Register entitled “Explainer: A closer look at Joni Ernst’s military credentials” which of course, looks into the Iowa Senator’s military claims. It’s obvious to me, from reading the article that Noble was looking for an excuse to question Ms. Ernst’s military service, but that he was unable to do that without looking like a moron.

This comes a week after reading boneheaded fact checking articles in the New York Times about how Tim Scott Walker can’t be the President because he’s allergic to dogs. Also, the media spent their time fact-checking whether Walker really did buy a sweater at Kohl’s for $1.

Seriously? We’ve just suffered through the Presidency of a man whose only qualification for the job was that he would be the first not-completely White-skinned president. The media spent not a moment looking into President Obama’s background, not his education records, not his legislative background, or even a moment’s discussion of his leadership potential. But, we’re going to get wrapped around a candidates allergies and bargain-hunting capabilities. And we’re going to dissect a candidate’s military records. Civilians with absolutely no military experience think they can use military service against a rare veteran who is a politician.

Since Noble couldn’t find anything in her service to use against her, he questions whether or not she can concurrently serve in Congress and the National Guard. Funny, but I don’t remember that discussion about Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat Congresswoman who served concurrently in Congress and the Illinois National Guard as a Lieutenant Colonel.

But, hey, you folks in the media keep trying to convince us that you don’t have any political biases.

The only thing that I learned from the Register article is that Senator Ernst is so tiny. I never knew that.

I told you last week that Michelle Ye Hee Lee is quickly becoming my favorite fact checker at the Washington Post and once again she proves that she’s free of the political ties that bind many of the folks at the Post.

This week she examines the charges coming from “somewhere” in Washington, in regards to whether Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) is a combat veteran or not.

Coffman had a tiff with VA Secretary MacDonald when the Congressman was grilling MacDonald on whether the Secretary had affected any real change at the Department and MacDonald shot back that “I ran a large company, sir, what have you done?”

Well, Coffman was a Marine infantry officer in the 1st Iraq War in 1991 and then as a civil affairs officer in the 2d Iraq War. He earned the Combat Action Ribbon, so, of course he’s a combat veteran.

Ms. Lee asked our buddy, Dan Caldwell, legislative director for Concerned Veterans for America and former Marine;

[Caldwell said that] the generally accepted use of the term is for those who were “with a unit, in the military, on the ground, and you were supporting or directly engaged in military effort against an enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan or another combat zone.”

[…]

“The bigger issue is, did somebody blatantly misrepresent their service — i.e., ribbons they didn’t rate, lying about things they didn’t actually experience, and even the larger issues of, ‘What are the larger strategic implications behind the combat that they supposedly are engaging or aren’t’?” Caldwell said. “We, as a veteran community, sometimes get hung up on these things that, at the end of the day, don’t make a big difference.”

Well, after examining his records and the legal, “official” definitions of a combat veteran, Ms. Lee gave Coffman the Post’s seal of approval;

The criteria for the Combat Action Ribbon that Coffman received requires proof he was in actual combat operations. Without having been there with him, this is the best measure to confirm his experience. We award Coffman the elusive Geppetto Checkmark.

I can’t ever remember any Republican getting a Geppetto, I’m sure that there have been some, I just don’t remember any. You might remember that Ms. Lee gave Mr. MacDonald 4 Pinocchios last week for claiming that he’d fired a bunch of folks at the Department when he really hadn’t fired a bunch, just a couple of them.

By the way, if you’re wondering what Coffman thinks of the dust-up yesterday about Secretary MacDonald, Fox News reports;

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., called the misstatement an error but said “it doesn’t dim the fact that he served honorably.”

He said: “We should all take him at his word and Washington shouldn’t spend the next two weeks arguing about it. The Secretary has a job to do — clean up the scandal-plagued VA. This latest controversy shouldn’t shift one iota of focus away from that long overdue task.”

Senator Joni Ernst commanded a company of transportation folks in Iraq in 2003-2004 and now she’s being criticized by those people on the other side of the aisle because she calls herself a “combat veteran”. From Raw Story;

The newly elected Republican lawmaker defended her military service record after a Huffington Post article pointed out that she never came under fire while serving in Iraq and Kuwait more than a decade ago, reported the Omaha World-Herald.

[…]

The report pointed out that Ernst frequently reminded voters and now constituents of her combat veteran status, and she has not corrected others when they suggest she led troops into battle.

“I am very proud of my service and by law I am defined as a combat veteran,” Ernst said. “I have never once claimed that I have a Combat Action Badge. I have never claimed that I have a Purple Heart. What I have claimed is that I have served in a combat zone.”

First of all, the stank-ass hippies at the Huffington Post aren’t the arbiters of who is a combat veteran and who isn’t. This sounds like something I’d read at VoteVets or in an IAVA scorecard. I think that Jessica Lynch might take exception with the Huffington Post that truckdrivers aren’t allowed to call themselves “combat soldiers”.

Several people who thought that I’d agree with them have sent me links to the various stories about Ernst complaining that she’s stealing valor. I disagree, not because she’s a Republican, but because she’s a veteran who served in an area that earned her “imminent danger pay”. If she was claiming honors that she didn’t earn, I’d agree, but she hasn’t.

We go on and on about telling the truth, that all military service is honorable without embellishment. Ernst hasn’t said that she was kicking doors or interrogating prisoners or anything else. She has said that it was the luck of the draw that her unit didn’t encounter enemy soldiers or improvised explosives. That’s true, not everyone spends their 20 years in the service in constant danger and in contact with our enemies. She was in Iraq and she led the troops in her command in a way that they were able to complete their mission without any injuries and that is an accomplishment in itself.

Yes, we’ve disagreed with veterans in politics but without criticizing their actual service, and I’m not going to begin now. Even the Huffinton Post admits that Ernst and her troops performed admirably;

Senator Ernst calls herself a combat veteran at every turn — on her Senate web page, in campaign debates, and in her stump speeches. She can say this because she served in a combat zone.

And it’s technically true. She was company commander of the Iowa National Guard’s 1168th Transportation Company during its tour of active duty in Kuwait and southern Iraq, from February 2003 to April 2004. But the unit was never in a firefight, or for that matter attacked at all; it delivered supplies, and later, guarded the front gate and ran perimeter patrol at their home base outside Kuwait City, Camp Arifjan.

The HuffPo finds a veteran who will criticize her, but they haven’t bothered talking to anyone who will defend her. This is not my surprised expression.

Thanks to Bobo for the link to Raw Story

ADDED: I just talked to TSO and he says that the reporter at HuffPo, Andrew Reinbach, interviewed him for an hour for that article and TSO pretty much said what I wrote – but HuffPo didn’t use even a minute of the interview with him. Gee, I wonder why?

Apparently, Brian Williams is taking himself off the air because he’s taking so much heat from his little tale about being the victim of Iraqi RPG fire.

In a memo Saturday to NBC News staff that was released by the network, the anchorman said that as managing editor of “NBC Nightly News” he is taking himself off the broadcast for several days. Weekend anchor Lester Holt will fill in, Williams said.

NBC News refused to comment Saturday on when or whether Williams would return and who would decide his future.

Williams, however, said he would be back.

Yahoo News writes that Williams isn’t alone in his story-stretching, ticking off a list of fabricators like Hillary Clinton and Tom Harkin. They forget about Scott Beauchamp who the media defended for his flights of fancy about his time in Iraq. Jesse MacBeth also comes to mind, although not a journalist, he was quoted throughout the media until military folks policed up his BS. And who could forget Dan Rather – the fellow who coined the phrase “fake but accurate” and who is now supporting Williams.

There are calls for folks to leave Williams alone – they even call it “false memories” like it was his brain’s fault – even though the reportage that went out right after incident was titled “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire“. So he must’ve misremembered it moments after it happened. Of course, the troops aren’t going to leave Williams alone.

Why? Well, Williams is taking this hit for more than a decade of their treatment by the media. Look at how the media wouldn’t let go of issues like weeks, months, years, of Abu Ghraib, the urination videos, Haditha, those pictures in the LA Times of troops posing with the bodies of suicide bombers, SSG Robert Bales. How many other stories about the troops that media used to make them look sub-human even though most of them had nothing to with these big media events.

How about the New York Times releasing classified information that may or may not have resulted in deaths on the battlefield? How about the media running with the so-called “Collateral Murder” video without a bit of context from the people who were there.

How about the countless articles about veterans being bad and the media always linking it to battlefield stress, whether or not the veteran involved had ever been near combat.

It’s probably unfair that Williams is taking all of this heat from veterans, but then it was unfair the way that the media has treated the troops and veterans as long as they’re fighting a war that the media opposed on political grounds.

So, media, here you go – your own Abu Ghraib. All journalists lie – always. Just like all soldiers torture prisoners with naked pyramids, and urinate on their dead bodies. Live with it.

By the way, I hope Williams doesn’t resign and I hope he keeps on doing whatever he does at NBC – that makes me better than the journalists who called for General McCrystal to resign.

Next!!!

Within the American military and the veterans’ community there is no more despicable crime than that of Stolen Valor. It took years for us to convince Congress that representing oneself as a veteran or a military member when one is not, should be a criminal act. The catalyst that finally moved Congress to action was the book, Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History by B.G. “Jug” Burkett, a former Army officer and Vietnam veteran, and Glenna Whitely. Burkett and Whitely assembled a comprehensive and compelling argument that most of the homeless losers, loners and druggies the mainstream media spotlighted as typical Vietnam veterans were in fact phonies who had either never served in the military, or if they had, had never been anywhere close to Vietnam.

Congress passed the first Stolen Valor act in 2005 but it was seldom enforced and ultimately struck down in 2012 by the Supreme Court as a too broadly written limitation on free speech. The following year Congress passed the Stolen Valor Act of 2013 which amends the federal criminal code to make it a federal violation to make fraudulent claims about military service with the intent to obtain money, property, or other tangible benefit.

In addition, 18 USC § 912 provides that whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. And 10 USC § 771 states that except as otherwise provided by law, no person except a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps, as the case may be, may wear — (1) the uniform, or a distinctive part of the uniform, of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps; or (2) a uniform any part of which is similar to a distinctive part of the uniform of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps.

Another element of Stolen Valor offenders is that the wannabees don’t just claim combat service but they seem unable to resist portraying themselves as performing heroic deeds while serving in elite units. The real-life exploits of the Navy’s SEAL units has made them the favored target of the phonies followed closely by Army Special Forces, Army Rangers, Marine Force Recon, and even the occasional Air Force Special Operations Commando. As faux special operators, they lavishly award themselves with the medals listed above, frequently with multiple awards of the same medals which most of us with military service quickly spot as bogus because of the relative rarity of such occurrences.

While many of the impostors content themselves with boasting of their ersatz exploits on Facebook and other social media outlets, the bolder ones simply can’t resist swathing themselves in uniform, which is almost always their downfall because try as they might, they just never get it right. Sometimes it is downright laughable how wrong they do get it but the fact remains that any uniform is usually sufficient to fool the civilian populace into giving them military discounts or other preferential treatments which is where their deception crosses the line into criminal behavior. Some present counterfeit military documents to buttress their claims of entitlement. Many large corporations generously offer substantial discounts to those with proof of military service just as many states offer special license plates, including Purple Heart tags, indicating that one has been wounded in battle, a significant honor among those who have faced an enemy in combat and survived to wear it.

All that explanation brings me to the subject of my title. It is to set the stage so that you who have no military experience can comprehend how seriously the military and veterans’ community take such fraud and deception. While the usual suspects in Stolen Valor incidents tend to be ordinary people who wish to embellish an otherwise lackluster existence or more mean-spiritedly to derive a benefit from their deceptions, occasionally even the mighty, famed far and wide, who one would think have no need to embroider their careers just can’t resist the temptation to satisfy something that is apparently lacking in their sense of self-worth. The Democrat party has had a number of such among their leadership among them presidential candidates, secretaries of state, senators and on and on.

Now we have a mainstream media figure, NBC News anchorman Brian Williams, who has been accused of making false claims of coming under hostile fire in Iraq while aboard a helicopter. Those who blew the whistle are former members of the air crews who were present and know that Williams’ claim is bogus: Stolen Valor writ large. Caught out so publicly, Williams has recanted, but in the most weaselly way possible, a civilian version of the usual fallback position for Stolen Valor frauds when caught, PTSD, or in William’s case,

“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”

Yeah, well, he’s only been telling that story publicly, even on air, that his helicopter was shot down, since 2003, and as recently as last Friday during NBC’s coverage of a tribute to a wounded veteran at a New York Rangers hockey game. While Williams will no doubt have most of the liberal media and the Democrat party circling their wagons around him, there are some of his media colleagues who are calling for his resignation, noting that as an anchorman, his perceived honesty is his most essential qualification for the job. I hold out little hope for that eventuality but I find it ironic that it is a member of the same media that promoted and perpetuated the wave of Stolen Valor incidents so long ago that led to the image of us Vietnam veterans as drug-crazed, homeless losers that now feels the sting. However, I do hope that this incident will focus wider attention on the very real problem of Stolen Valor and make Americans realize that it is a serious offense to those of us who have worn the uniform and served honorably. And those of you who would entertain the thought of committing Stolen Valor fraud just might want to consider how many of us there are out there who will expose and report you, just as Brian Williams has been outted by former members of the 159th Aviation Regiment. And like Williams, your well-deserved embarrassment will be quite public, posted on the many veteran-operated websites out there who out phonies every day. Your family, tour friends, your co-workers, everyone who knows you will know what a rat you are.

Here are some of those websites:

This Ain’t Hell
Stolenvaloroffendersexposedblogspot.com
Guardian of Valor
ExtremeSEALexperience
Fakewarriorsproject
POW Network

And here’s a web page with a list of federal agencies to which suspected Stolen Valor fraud can be reported:

WWW.stolenvalor.com

Oh, I was going to list the NBC News contact link but it’s not working. Wonder why?

Crossposted at American Thinker

A regular here, AverageNCO, who, by the way just retired from the Air Force recently, sent us a transcription from the journal he kept while he was at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait during the Second Iraq War.

5 APR 03
Pulled Viper Duty Again (call sign for four-man squad patrolling a 5K restricted zone outside the wire of Ali Al Salem). It was actually kind of boring. The highlight had been ordering Pizza. We were on our last patrol when we came across four civilians in the restricted area behind the burm. As we approached them they were Americans. Not only were they Americans. It was NBC Nightly News’ Brian Willams. He got kind of arrogant saying it was no problem that they weren’t going to film anything important. SSgt Peterson said it was a big deal and asked for his I.D. like he didn’t know or care who he was. After a lot of back and forth between us them and the Kuwaitis, they finally got to film. The Williams guy was actually kind of pompous. He told us he was going to call Donald Rumsfeld’s Secretary to make us let them tape.

Actually, Williams told the woman on the phone “Hey, this is Brian Williams…..get me Rummy on the phone!” as if that would impress the patrol.

I hate the media, generally speaking, in a war zone – they think they’re bullet proof and they don’t care that the rest of us aren’t. Their hangnails and the sand in their Underoos is always our fault. There are some good ones out there, but Brian Williams isn’t one of them. AverageNCO said that when they came up on the NBC crew, Williams jumped out the cab of the vehicle with hairspray in one hand and a hair brush in the other.

But I guess he’s getting his comeuppance now. How much truble do you have to be in for Dan Rather to think that he can salvage your reputation? The hippies are firing up their bowls to dig him out of his lies, like this Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy person, who says that he caught the PTSD when he arrived at the scene of the helicopter forced landing an hour after it happened;

While Williams has not said that he has post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s a common side effect of covering war and other disturbing events. A study done by Finnish researchers in 2007 shows that many journalists experience PTSD more as a result of guilt than as a result of what they have actually experienced or seen, due to their presence at the scene as a reporter instead of as a first-responder.

Yeah, uh-uh. That makes perfect sense – PTSD from guilt. Stupid hippies.

I honestly hadn’t planned on putting Williams on our Stolen Valor Page, but because everyone is coming out of the woodwork to defend him, I figured he needed some sort of special recognition.