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

Category: Phony soldiers

  • Strandlof/Duncan out of jail

    Everyone’s favorite IVAW member/VoteVets blogger this year, Rick Strandlof-Duncan, is up for a breath of fresh air today according to the Denver Post;

    The man now known as the fake veteran for duping politicians, veterans and advocate groups into believing he’s a wounded Iraq veteran will be released from jail Tuesday after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor traffic citations.

    Judge Jonathan L. Walker sentenced Rick Strandlof to 20 days in jail with credit for time served and one year of unsupervised probation. Strandlof must also pay a $150 in court fines.

    Strandlof was being held on a $1,000 misdemeanor traffic warrant since his arrest May 12.

    Does this sound like contrition?

    In a previous interview with 9Wants to Know, Strandlof admitted he did not always tell the truth when he fought for veterans’ rights and claimed to have served three tours of duty in Iraq.

    “Always tell the truth”? How about “ever told the truth”? Even his name was a lie. He probably wasn’t even gay…well, until now.

    In another Denver Post story earlier in the week, they claimed he was still being investigated by the FBI;

    …while the FBI is investigating possible fraud, no charges have been filed.

    That’s probably because “his heart was in the right place” to use IVAW’s Garret Reppenhagen’s words;

    Besides, Duncan’s intentions seemed straightforward. He sent care packages to troops in Iraq. He stood up for homeless veterans in Colorado Springs. He advanced his anti-war politics by connecting with like-minded candidates.

    He even launched his own organization, the Colorado Veterans Alliance, which he said represented 32,000 veterans on a massive mailing list — though the only visible members seemed to be a cadre of local vets.

    He certainly talked the talk. Duncan mingled easily in the military milieu. And in some ways, he walked the walk.

    “It seems like his heart was in the right place,” said Reppenhagen, 33. “He was a really hard worker. He did a lot of good by raising a lot of awareness, but then you find out that he’s a fraud.”

    “Talked the talk”, “walked the walk”? Yeah, as long as it was anti-war gibberish, he fit right in with the rest of them. But, that’s the IVAW we’ve all come to know. And apparently the Colorado Springs justice system. Maybe there are two Americas.

    Even Common Ills, the anti-war blog can add two and two;

    This ain’t Hell, but you can see it from here is a right wing website and, if you click here, you will be taken to their post on Rick Duncan and see him at the top of the post wearing his Winter Soldier IVAW t-shirt. Scroll down and you will see his bio at the Iraq Veterans Against the War website. Scroll down just a bit further and you will see how they disappeared it after it turned out Rick Duncan was Rick Strandlof and not a veteran or ever a member of the military. Only members would have the ability to post to IVAW’s website. There’s your answer. He posted there and he posted that he was a member. So he’s a member.

    Thanks to Mr Wolf for the tip.

  • Of Threats and Pseudonyms

    “KEEP MY NAME OFF YOUR BLOG OR WE SETTLE UP IN PERSON.”

    That was the call I got this morning, at work, at 10:04 am. The caller immediately hung up of course, being the coward he is. But, who could it be? My initial thought was it has to be Casey Affleck, pissed off that I didn’t IMDB his name the other day. Maybe it was Richard Gabriel, my favorite historian, pissed off that I once goofed on Candians. Nah, probably not him either. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Fred Downs. Well, I don’t know who it was, but I can guess. And I will, but first…

    I blog pseudonymously. I know, Shocker! My mother never yelled into the back yard “TSO [or the longer more pissed off Thus Spake Ortner]get your ass in here and clean your room!” Not once. Because that isn’t my name. When I started blogging every reader I had was in the 3rd Batt, 116th Infantry, and everyone both knew who I really was, and knew that Ortner was our Battalion Commander. Looking back now, I wish I chose another name, since I have come to peace with the BC, and he’s probably confused why I took his name.

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  • Remembering old IVAW friends

    Since TSO is getting threatening phone calls from one of our old friends from IVAW, I thought I’d bring back memories by telling you what Adam Kokesh has been up to lately. I know I’ve mentioned that he was contemplating running for a Congressional seat in New Mexico next year, so for some reason he won’t be writing on his “Revolutionary Patriot” blog anymore and he’s focusing on the run. Here’s his new website;

    kokesh-for-congress-6-09

    He seems to be toning down his image a bit. Probably a good idea. But I went through his “About Adam” page and I can’t seem to find anything about the IVAW. He’s not ashamed is he?

    He also mentions that he was promoted to sergeant – but he doesn’t mention that he was busted for smuggling an Iraqi pistol back from the war. He was a corporal when his term of service ended. We’ve already settled that.

    He mentions some activism;

    In addition to addressing the kind of suffering he experienced first-hand in Fallujah, he has organized to help veterans struggling with PTSD, railed against 4th Amendment violations, and stood up against the Federal Reserve.

    Yes, he organized veterans to hang out in the IVAW clubhouse on Princeton Place, take xanax and gin, store their urine in a refrigerator, and engage in paranoid rants at the police. But I don’t think any of that is usually accepted as treatment for PTSD. But here’s a screenshot of the xanax and gin rant for posterity;

    kokesh-xanax1

    He doesn’t mention that he dropped hate literature all over the GWU campus trying to frame a conservative student group. Of course, he skated on that charge. Just like he’s skated on all of his antics. Probably because of Daddy’s money.

    I don’t see any mention of Karaoke night with Code Pink, either. Or his arrest in DC for putting up posters after he was ordered not to put up posters by a DC cop.

    He does mention his discharge though – except that he says his discharge was “Honorable”, when actually it was “General under honorable conditions”.

    I’m beginning to think that Kokesh is embarrassed by the truth about his past.

  • Phony paratrooper at D-Day ceremony

    Howard Manoian seems to be a popular guy with the media since he’s a veteran of the D-Day invasion. You can find his accounts across a large range of media sources. Stars and Stripes interviewed him in 2006;

    So you’re one of the fellows who jumped out of an airplane and into this place?

    Oh yeah, by error. My company was Company A (1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Regiment, 82nd Airborne). Objective La Priere, take the bridge and hold it. By error I landed here in Sainte-Mère-Église. I ended up in the cemetery in the back of the church. But my company was at the bridge. I arrived two days later. I was stuck here, and I attached myself to Company G to help protect Sainte-Mère-Église from the Germans. Once it was cleaned out, they were trying to get back in.

    CNN interviewed him in 2004:

    MANOIAN: All I know is they’re shooting at us, I shoot back. That’s it. No feelings, you know?

    BITTERMAN (on camera): Nothing personal?

    MANOIAN: Nothing personal.

    BITTERMAN (voice-over): Today the old soldiers who were on different sides of a world war pose and sign autographs in front of the Stop Bar (ph), answering the questions.

    But the one Howard says he’ll never answer is how many Germans did you kill?

    The San Francisco Chronicle also interviewed him in 2004;

    Paratrooper Howard Manoian landed in the town graveyard, nearly two miles from La Fiere bridge, which he had been ordered to seize.

    “I banged on doors — I had a French phrase book,” recalled the Massachusetts native and decorated war veteran from his home in Chef-du-Pont, two miles from St. Mere-Eglise. “I said, ‘Me, La Fiere.’ They said, ‘No. St. Mere-Eglise.’ ”

    It took Manoian two days, ducking gunfire from reassembled German forces, to get to the bridge. His platoon kept moving, later crossing the Ardennes into Belgium and then into Germany. In April 1945, Manoian was sent home. A few weeks later, the war was over.

    Here he is doing an interview in a British documentary;

    And a video of him sticking up some German re-enactors.

    In fact, he’s been doing interviews as recently as last week, with the tales of his daring-do.

    Manoian was interviewed by the Boston Herald in 2001, but now, the Herald is blowing the whistle on the 94-year-old;

    National Archives records provided to the Herald by military researchers show Manoian does in fact deserve recognition as one of the many thousands of young American soldiers who put their lives on the line on D-Day – not as a paratrooper, but as a member of a less glamorous chemical warfare unit that came ashore on Utah Beach and ran a supply dump.

    “The military records leave no doubt that he never served in Normandy as a paratrooper,” said researcher Brian Siddall of Ithaca, N.Y., citing numerous reports and payroll records listing Manoian in the 33rd Chemical Decontamination Company throughout 1944.

    So, yeah, Manoian was at Normandy, but his accounts of parachuting in with the 505th, killing Germans and being saved by the French are a stretch. He was busted as a fraud by his own 82d brotherhood;

    D-Day paratrooper David Bullington, 88, of Dyesburg, Tenn., whose name appears in the 82nd’s official records, said he only met Manoian years after the war and Manoian told him three different versions of where he landed.

    “You don’t land in three different places in one jump and walk away,” Bullington said. Noting that he lost a lot of friends that day, Bullington added, “I don’t like to see someone claiming to be a paratrooper to grab a little bit of glory for doing what real paratroopers did in Ste. Mere-Eglise. It’s a slap in the face.”

    In numerous interviews – even when challenged by the Herald this week – Manoian has said he was shot and hit in both legs by shrapnel June 17, 1944, while searching a house. But records show he was evacuated to England that day after fracturing his middle finger, returning to duty only in November 1944 – precluding his claim of a combat jump in Holland on Sept. 17, 1944.

    That’s some fractured finger to keep him out of the war for five months.

    I don’t understand why folks who had honorable service feel they have to embellish their records. If I had met Howard and he’d told me landed on Normandy and worked in a supply depot, I’d have still shook his hand and thanked him. This, though is unforgivable.

    Jules Crittenden writes that Manoian gave a Gallic Shrug to the discovery of his charade.

    Thanks to 1stCavRVN11B for the tip.

  • Another phony Marine

    Phoenix police are looking for a fraud named John W. Rodriguez who awarded himself a Silver Star and a Navy Cross. His fraud fits between Rick Duncan and Jesse MacBeth because although he doesn’t have the vast experience of 44 days in service of MacBeth, he at least took the ASVAB battery of tests once – which puts him a leg up on Duncan.

    The Fox affiliate that broadcast the report, calls it a “sad case of military fraud“. The guy had uniforms and ribbons in his house when police searched it so I don’t what’s sad about it – the guy lied to a judge so he could skip town and used the military as an excuse. Rodriguez will probably be sad, though, when he meets his new husband in the hoosegow.

    Oh, and it looks like the idiot pinned the miniature ribbons to his collar. If that’s the way he went to court, and they let him walk out of the courtroom, they deserve to have to look for his dumbass.

    Thanks to 1stCavRVN11B for pointing me to Code Monkey‘s post.

  • Dustin Che Stevens; 2d dumbest deserter ever

    Sporkmaster sent me a link to a Courage to Resist article about three “brave” resisters who’ve refused to do the duty that they promised Americans they’d do. The first two were Victor Agosto and Andre Sheperd who we’ve already talked about here. The third one is new to me; CTR says is his name is Dustin Che Stevens, but I’d wager the Che part just got added recently.

    Stevens story makes him the 2d dumbest deserter of the ones we’ve encountered. The number one spot is occupied by Corey Glass who TSO wrote about last year. Glass is hiding out in Canada, but the Army says they’re not even looking for him. Glass found out that the Army isn’t looking him for him last year but he’s still applying for refugee status in Canada.

    Now, Stevens, on the other hand, decided to make his statement at his Airborne School graduation;

    After five months in the Army, Dustin Che Stevens sat down during Airborne graduation in 2002 in order to refuse graduation.

    Can you imagine the smoke those Blackhats brought that day? Well, that’s still not the part that makes him 2d dumbest – he claims that they told him to go home and wait for his discharge. I shit you not. Have any of you ever been told to go home and wait for your discharge? The Army just doesn’t send folks home to wait for anything without leave. Stevens is a lyin’ ass and the hippies prove themselves to be idiots once again by believing it.

    Now, after seven years of waiting for his discharge, he’s all upset because he got picked up in a traffic stop in his hometown as a deserter and he’s sitting in a jail cell (he claims it’s an 8 x 8 cell that he shares with three other derelicts – another lie the hippies suck up) at Fort Bragg.

    “Lots of other guys return from AWOL and test positive for drugs, and are processed out,” he said. But if you return without evidence of drug use, the Airborne wants you as a combat soldier in Afghanistan.

    Um, no they don’t, Dustin. They don’t want your stupid ass anywhere near some paratroopers.

  • Carl Webb; the IVAW deserter who didn’t desert

    As most of my regular readers know, there’s turmoil churning around the ranks in the Iraq Veterans Against the War. Although it’s a result of many things, the most contentious point of the turmoil is between the regular patriotic members who merely oppose the war and the members who want the IVAW to become a tool of the International Socialist Organization – just a facade of veterans to lend some legitimacy to the entire socialist movement. The most vile and despicable member of IVAW, Carl Webb, belongs to that second group.

    Earlier this month, TSO wrote about Webb when Casey Porter resigned from IVAW and brought our attention to Webb. Since then, Kris Goldsmith resigned and this stirred Webb up again. He bragged on his own Facebook page that he forced another resignation of a “conservative” from IVAW;
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  • Information on Doug Zachary needed

    While we’re all waiting for the newest Carl Webb post to publish tomorrow morning (it’s all about the traffic, folks), I thought I’d put out a call for some information on our next target who will be Doug Zachary, the president of the Austin Chapter of the Geezers for Sitting On Our Hands (Vets For Peace to some).

    Here’s a picture I found that I had of ol’ Doug when he was at the VFP’s National Archives camp out last year;

    I’d just discovered who he was yesterday after watching a video on Austin public access channel that he did with a Code Pink crone (please don’t watch the video unless you have trouble sleeping). Then this morning, one of our new readers, Debbie, verified it for me.

    I’d talked on the phone for an hour yesterday with another recent IVAW refugee who told me some things about Zachary that made me think of Ward Reilly. Here’s what I know so far;

    Zachary was in the Marine Corps from 1968 – 1970 and somehow avoided Vietnam Those of you were in the service at the time know how hard that would have been to pull off.

    Publicly, Zachary says that he was a conscientious objector, but privately he brags that he was just a derelict that the Marines finally booted out because they were tired of his antics. Several former members of IVAW have told me that they suspect he steals from every cause he touches. He doesn’t seem interested in many of IVAW and VFP’s projects until he smells a fund-raising opportunity that he can loot.

    A few of the folks at the “Under the Hood” cafe in Killeen, TX tell me that he has insinuated himself into their projects without invitation as soon as they became successful and Zachary smelled money. It sounds like Ward Reilly cloned. Remember Reilly looted the VFP’s funds meant for Katrina victims. Well, it seems that Zachary is similarly motivated.

    Another IVAW refugee told me that they think that Zachary is violent and that’s why no one in VFP, VVAW or IVAW will confront him on his malfeasance. I’ve found evidence of his violence, actually, which I’ll save for the final edit of the story.

    So, since Zachary doesn’t have the large presence on the internet that others we’ve investigated here, anyone that has more information, preferably something that can be corroborated, or if you want to corroborate what I’ve I’ve already discovered, drop me a note. Apparently, Zachary has no friends in IVAW, or VFP, for that matter and we’ll probably be doing a favor for the troops by rolling up this clown – who, by the way, seems to be a Carl Webb acolyte – well, until tomorrow when he learns the truth about Webb.