This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Phony soldiers

  • SV Millard: Iraq veteran in Vietnam

    Geof “Stolen Valor” Millard has a story up on the IVAW website which chronicles his latest adventure to Vietnam, entitled “My part in a veterans deligation [sic] to Vietnam“. Millard is famous for his trips to places like Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela to denigrate America. Now he goes to Vietnam with VVAW and VFP members to trot out his biases and blow his own horn;

    Virtnam may seem an odd place for an Iraq vet whose parents had not even met when the last US forces retreated in defeat hanging from helicopters, but somehow I was the perfect peice to complete a very complicated puzle. You see there are many conections to be made between the two wars but I was there because both were toxic battlefields that left veteran and civillian alike scared for many generations.

    I guess he doesn’t have spell check on his computer;

    I was amazed to see vterans of both sides share war storries as easily as stories of thier children, most of whom are many years my elder. These vets also share disseases that are just as much the legacy of Vietnam as is that black mirrored wall on the north west side of our national mall, just to the left of lincolns feet.

    My thoughts offten wandered forward in time to the day when I would go to Iraq. When I would meet with my former foe. When I would help press my government to take resposability and provide relief for the toxic battlefield we have been creating seince the first gulf war.

    Millard had an enemy in Iraq other than boredom? He was a general’s gopher. He spent his whole time in Iraq trying to get back to the States because he had an owie in his back (that he admits he had since high school).

    Depleted uranium is killing our soldiers in Iraq & Afghanistan.

    We must fight for compensation and treatment before thousands die from DU as they did from AO. We must link our struggle for justice with that of those left alive in the toxic battlefieds that we are now slowly pulling out of.

    There it is – the IVAW is going to try to copy the Vietnam War veterans by pushing this absolutely ridiculous depleted uranium canard. That’s all they have and if you don’t believe them they’ll wave the Agent Orange bloody shirt.

    I’m proud of my trip and I am proud of the work done by VVAW, VFP, and IVAW. I am proud that while some spend thier time protesting antiwar veterans, we the antiwar vterans are hard at work for peace and justice for all.

    “Hard at work” only if it involves completely ridiculous trips to communist countries to push an agenda that doesn’t help American veterans. Then swat at ghosts of completely manufactured maladies.

    I guess he’s saying that the American Legion and VFW are “protesting antiwar veterans” but if he’s trying to say that IVAW has done more more for veterans than the traditional VSOs because they took this one useless trip, he’s fooling himself.

    In fact, maybe IVAW can stop pushing their “Veterans as sociopathic nuts” meme to help fix this problem;

    “Part of the issue is there’s a real disconnect between the military and the rest of America,” said Mark Walker, deputy director of the American Legion’s economic division.

    “People outside the military don’t know about PTSD or TBI. It’s all new to them. So they worry, ‘Am I going to see some sort of outburst? What might he do?’”

    How about fixing that, Geoff, instead of flying to Vietnam to take shots at us!

  • Adam Appel, megaphony

    The folks at Professional Soldiers and SOCNet want us to get the word out about this :adventurer, who goes by the name of Adam Appel, but was christened Adam Bremmer, according to our friends at POW Net.

    Appel claims he was a member of Army Special Forces. This is from his resume’;
    (more…)

  • Dude. She was already marrying you.

    This is the story of Douglas Lee Weaver, a 35-year-old Arab, AL man who wore his uniform to his wedding with a couple of extra shiny things on it – a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star and a Combat Infantry Badge. Then he put a picture of him and his new bride on the mantle. The Huntsville Times tells what happened next;

    Last fall, law enforcement came to search Weaver’s Marshall County home to investigate a receiving stolen property charge about a four-wheeler and a trailer. There they found a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun, which was unlawful for Weaver to possess because he was convicted of felony theft by deception in 2006.

    Brower said the officer – a military veteran – investigating the case knew Weaver and knew his military past didn’t include war medals. But he saw the couple’s wedding photo in which the defendant was wearing the Silver Star, Distinguished Service Cross and a Combat Infantry Badge.

    “The prosecution has the wedding photos to prove he did this,” Brower said. “Needless to say, my client is no longer married to this person.”

    So she was already marrying the guy – what did he think she’d do if he wore the medals? And none of those round medals for hiim – obviously he thought the various shapes would make his uniform more fung shui. WAFF reports that Weaver pleaded not guilty.

    The Times tells another tale of another case;

    Last month, Skyler Tarquin Smith, 26, of Huntsville pleaded not guilty to wearing combat medals he didn’t earn. He was also charged with felony wire fraud and making false statements to the government about being a service-disabled veteran, which allowed him to win a federal defense contract.

    Smith had served in the Army, but he went AWOL before his unit deployed to Afghanistan.

    He has since entered a request to change his plea, and he is scheduled to do so on Tuesday.

    Skyler could have gone to Afghanistan and earned his medals like the rest of us have to do. I guess short cuts seem like a good idea at first.

  • Rodriguez pleads “not guilty”

    Some of you may remember John W. Rodriguez who spent years posing as a reserve Marine in Phoenix that TAH readers had a hand in catching . The last we heard from the case, he was contemplating a plea deal that would have knocked off about 90% of his potential sentence.

    Friday, the lead detective in the case emailed me that Rodriguez decided to reject that plea deal, which means he’s now facing up to 150 years in prison.

    Hey Jonn

    FYI John Rodriguez pleaded “Not Guilty”, so we will be going to court. By pleading not guilty he is looking at many years in prison.

    He’s probably hoping it’ll be overturned on appeal as a violation of his 1st amendment right to be a dumbass. One of the charges against him is that he avoided a court date for a traffic ticket by telling the judge he was about to be deployed to Iraq. Since he wasn’t in the military, there’s no defense for that infraction.

    He’d better take a big batch of lemon squares with which to make friends in prison.

  • Phony charity busted

    TSO sends this link to an article about a California man who set himself up as a charity for Vandenburg AFB and claimed to be a Navy commander;

    Beginning in October 2006 and running through late 2007, [James Kent Barbee, 60] collected a total of $94,130, investigators said. He would occasionally don a military uniform when meeting with prospective donors, authorities said, and reportedly had a photo of himself in uniform posted on his website.

    “We learned of the Liberty Spirit after a legitimate military officer, who is also a doctor, met with Barbee to discuss the foundation,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. “The legitimate officer quickly realized that Barbee was a fake. The matter was referred to DCIS, which opened an investigation.”

    This scumbag will be running around free on a puny $25,000 bond until October when he gets sentenced. The bail amount should indicate how seriously the judge takes this crime. The article says he faces 20 years in a Federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for all of the charges against him, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts that he gets less than a quarter of that.

    From another article;

    At least one donor gave $12,000 on the condition that the money be used to make a video about a treatment facility in Missouri for veterans with PTSD, according to the complaint.

    Instead, Barbee used a large portion of the money on rent for his Carpinteria home and other personal expenditures, court documents state.

    That’s why I always check out any charities before I post about them here. There are serious scumbags out there waiting to relieve you of your dough and I won’t be a part of it.

  • Charity; UR doin’ it wrong

    The last we heard about Stop Loss rapper Marc Hall, he was headed to Iraq for his court martial. He faced charges that he that threatened to shoot his chain-of-command in his little recording of a rap ditty. So if he’s going to Iraq, obviously, his civilian lawyers won’t be there. Can anyone tell me why his National Lawyer Guild counselors would need to raise money for his defense?

    charity-yer-doin-it-wrong

    Now someone tell me how the anti-war Left isn’t doing what they do for profit.

  • Why we have no pity for Phony Soldiers.

    Medals don’t make the hero

    That is what a blog post by a author named Mark McCarter.

    He talks about a Marine by the name Greg Suedmeyer

    He did a tour in Iraq. When he got back to the states, he was at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He was headed home to Huntsville from there last weekend.

    Then, on Saturday evening, because a 71-year-old man was inexplicably going the wrong way on I-20 outside Atlanta, Suedmeyer was killed.

    There’s the life lesson for us all on the fragility of it all, the “you never know” that sobers us all. You sign up to be a Marine, you get sent to Iraq, the odds slide against you. Bombs, rockets, insane insurgents.

    Then you lose your life on a Georgia freeway because somebody is driving the wrong way. Your wife is at your side. Your dog is in the back seat. It’s not supposed to happen.

    People like Skyler Tarquin Smith

    He claimed that he had several awards to include two Purple Hearts. But seems he went AWOL before his unit deployed.

    But here is the real reason that caused me to write this post. Also the caption for this next photo is so perfect that I cannot say anything better.

    Why do we expose frauds and phonies?

    Take a good look at this picture and then tell us a phony has a constitutional right – “Freedom of Speech” –
    to say he earned a Purple Heart when he did not.

    That says it all right there.

  • Phony SEAL gets 10 days snorkeling

    I guess at Bethesda they take a proactive approach to phonies;

    A service member in the shop reported Dieu to base police as being suspicious, because the ribbons he was wearing appeared incongruous, according to prosecutors. At the time, it was reported that Dieu was wearing a Navy SEAL badge, Defense Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf cluster, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Purple Heart, and other ribbons, prosecutors said.

    On July 23, an officer approached Dieu, who was wearing a Navy uniform, and escorted him to the police station to verify his identity. Dieu told base police he was a Navy SEAL and Dieu was released, but further investigation revealed that Dieu was not a Navy SEAL and has never been a member of the military, prosecutors said.

    Dieu was arrested on Aug. 3, as he left the Uniform Shop after an investigator saw him pick up previously ordered medals and purchase two Silver Star ribbons, two Unit Combat Action ribbons, a Navy Good Conduct ribbon, and three stars. A subsequent search of Dieu’s car recovered other decorations and medals, according to prosecutors.

    But he only got ten days in the hoosegow, a year probation and 100 hours of community service. He needed at least a year in a federal “pound you in the ass” prison.

    Thanks to TSO for the link.