Category: Phony soldiers

I’ve read these somewhere before (I think TSO sent it to me once), but I thought y’all’d like to see these statistics on phony POWs in light of yesterday’s revelation about super-secret recondo Eugene Reed;

There are only 661 officially recognized U.S. POWs from the Vietnam period. About 550 of those are alive, but the VA says they are paying disability payments to 966 “Vietnam POWs.” It got worse after the 1991 Gulf War. There were 21 officially recognized POWs during that conflict, but the VA is paying disability to 286 Gulf War POWs. For years, the VA claimed that they checked out the records before recognizing all these phony POW vets. Once recognized as a POW by the VA, you have several financial benefits (like not having to make copayments for medical services). Thus the fake POWs are also guilty of stealing money from the government. Veterans groups believe the VA resisted dealing with this obvious fraud because of unwillingness to deal with the resulting bad publicity.

Ten-to-one is about right with Gulf War veterans. It’s probably the same as the ratio of people who claimed they were almost killed in SCUD attacks in that war, too.

I think it’s high time we put our pride aside and end this farce. I wonder if Mean Eugene was collecting benefits for his ill-concocted story. I found this part of the article a bit disturbing, though;

Many civilians accuse the authenticating organizations guilty of being vigilantes, as many people find nothing wrong in a little make believe.

Many civilians, and Charles Anderson, apparently. I’m not surprised that anyone who hasn’t really accomplished anything in their meager existence sees nothing wrong with stealing someone else’s accomplishments. I’m not exactly sure how calling out the media and a phony POW makes me a “patriot” (he says it as if it’s a bad word), but I guess that’s the new code word for “vigilante”.

I think the first time I read this (a month or so ago) we were in contact with POW Net and Mary mentioned that the VA won’t check their list of claimants against DoD’s list of POWs. They also won’t release a list of claimants so that we can check for them. With resources for veterans so scarce that they consider forcing veterans to pay for their service-connected health care, you’d think the VA would want to set this one right.

I got this article about twelve times in my inbox this morning and although it was meant for Uncle Jimbo, I figured I’d write a little something. The Madison Press‘ Sarah Thompson tries to write a touching tribute to veterans on Memorial Day, but she ends up getting scammed by a pretender named Eugene Reed;

As he described his experiences to me, I observed Reed’s mannerisms. His hand would tremble slightly when he mentioned a particularly uncomfortable subject. His eyes would brim with tears, and yet, he continued in detail.

“I did’t used to be able to talk about it,” he said.

Reed said the conventional wisdom was if a soldier survived through the first 30 days of combat, “you’d be OK.” Most men didn’t make it through the first 10 if they were brand new. He said if a soldier survived with three months left in his time of service, they would likely make it home.

“A lot of people got killed with only two or three days left,” Reed said.

His description of the war reminded me of the board game Clue. He wasn’t sure who he could trust — including women and children.

“You’d have a little kid come up and throw up a hand grenade. That made him a hero to kill two or three GIs. You learned not to trust anyone that approached you when you were in a group,” he said. “We had people walk up on us with grenades or kill you when they shine your shoe.”

Reed also spent time as a prisoner of war. His account was frightening and captivating.

“I was a prisoner of war for thee months,” he said softly. “I was 20 and we went into Cambodia. We were up in a tree. We’d followed Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Regulars, gathering information.

“All the sudden, I felt something cold in my ear. It was a P-10 pistol. Now, I speak fluently North and South Vietnamese. He told me, ‘You can either killroy (surrender) or I’ll blow your brains out.’”

Reed pantomimed raising his hands in the air, laughing.

“I said, ‘Yes, sir.’” he said. “We were on an ounce of rice a day. We had to drink nasty water. They had 13 guards on us and they was moving us north. Every night we’d go in and they’d tie us to a tree. They sat around the camp fire and take their AKs and click them at you. You didn’t know if it was going to be a real thing or not.

“The night we escaped, I heard them talking. They were going to kill us,” he said.

Reed devised a plan. When the guards released him to relieve himself, Reed waited until the guard turned his back. Then, he sprang into action.

“I grabbed him and broke his neck; grabbed his AK-47 and killed the rest of them. One of them got away,” Reed said. “We were on the run for 10 days through the jungle without our boots.”

When they made their way to the Marine stronghold in Pleiku, Vietnam, Reed and his friend were nearly killed by their fellow Americans. There was some confusion because the two men were not wearing dog tags.

“I had a top secret clearance for 14 years. I was not allowed to wear dog tags because if I got caught, I wasn’t there,” he said.

The first thing that I caught reading this story was how the enemy soldier told him to “killroy”. I never spent a day in Vietnam, but I know the term for surrender was “chu-hoy”, not fricken “kilroy“. And I know the term because I hung out with REAL Vietnam veterans.

And if he was on a recon, hiding in the jungle and he was some kind of super soldier, how was his first sense of another soldier a cold pistol barrel at his neck? Were the Viet Cong ninjas or ghosts?

Not allowed to wear dog tags, huh? In Vietnam? While we were fighting a war there? Why? Because the Army was afraid the Vietnamese might discover we have troops there? Dumbass.

The media needs to start checking itself – it’s criminal the way they let themselves be scammed. That Baum fella who responded to TSO the other day claimed that it’s not their fault because they’re just babes in the woods – are they blaming us then? If we can’t trust them to check on few old story-telling fools, how can we trust them to report on presidential candidates or healthcare issues or a whole litany of other things we depend on them to report to us?

This is Journalism 101 – make sure your sources are who they say they are, f’pete’s sake.

Our friends at POW Net have verified the clown was never a POW. If the Madison Press takes the article down, POW Net has a .pdf copy of it here. I’m sure someone is tracking down Reed’s military records now to see if the buffoon was even in the service.

Thanks to everyone who sent me a copy of it.

One of our newest readers, attracted here by our Rick Duncan post, wrote us about another phony Marine. At least this guy, Eric Piotrowski, actually joined the Marines, however he did his best to crap all over his service and his fellow Marines. He was also a police officer with Cal Expo in Sacramento (Police Link link);

A Cal Expo police officer was arrested by the FBI Friday on charges of falsely claiming he earned a Silver Star for gallantry in combat 18 years ago during Operation Desert Storm and then lying to FBI agents when confronted eight weeks ago.

Eric Gene Piotrowski, who is charged under the so-called Stolen Valor Act, made an initial appearance Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd, who ordered him released on a $10,000 unsecured bond.

Piotrowski, 41, bought the medal and certificate via the Internet in 2007, and created a citation on a personal computer, according to a sworn FBI affidavit in support of a criminal complaint.

So how did this bozo get busted? He claimed to his family that he requested his records from the Corps, and inexplicably sent him the citation along with the medal. So his family, being the loving, caring and proud people families can be, arranged for the California DVA Undersecretary to present it to Piotrowski in a surprise ceremony – that set off bells for real veterans when it was reported in the news.

It turns out that he had an exemplary record – a hard charging, well-trained Marine corporal. He’d just never been in a shooting war and made the rest up. He’s been featured over at our new friends at POW Network. What puzzles me is that his family must’ve known he wasn’t in Desert Storm;

Tremblay said Piotrowski’s story was made more believable by the fact he was in the Marine Corps and did serve in the Middle East.

But Piotrowski, after first insisting he was entitled to the Silver Star when he was interviewed by FBI agents on March 17, confessed in a second interview on March 20 that he was back in the United States when Desert Storm commenced and “did not encounter any hostile action,” according to Burgeson’s affidavit.

Sad and sorry bastard. He just got greedy. What did he think he was going to get out of it?

If some of you are still wondering about our own phony General, I’ll take this opportunity to let you all know that it’s been reported (finally) to the proper authorities and they’re working on it.