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

Category: Phony soldiers

  • IVAW/VVAW links: Camil part II [Jonn]

    1stCavRVN11B found some information on Scott Camil, the former VVAW member now advising the IVAW who I wrote about yesterday. He sent me a .pdf of an article from the April 2, 1975 New York Times “US Agents shoot anti-war figure” describing the events. Apparently, Camile was in the business of selling cocaine to DEA agents in 1975, with a side business of resisting arrest;

    I have the whole article and I’ll email it to anyone who wants a copy of it for posterity.  So Scott “The Assassin” Camil is just another in a long line of sociopaths who find their way into the anti-war movement. And another clown influencing the IVAW.

  • VVAW/IVAW links: Bill Perry [Jonn]

    This is Bill Perry of the old VVAW. Here’s a picture I took of him with Elvis Kokesh at the Ron Paul march last August carrying an upside down flag – that’s him, the sea cow-shaped guy, in the Black Vets For Peace T-shirt on your left;

    Ron Paul 079a

    Here’s a picture of him in the VVAW T-shirt horning in on a photo of me and Army Sergeant shaking hands at the Winter Soldiers Congressional hearing back in April(I didn’t find out who he was until after I wrote the post and posted the picture);

    DSC_0001

    Here he is planting a wet one on Elvis Kokesh last month in Nassau County when the charges against the IVAW arrestees were dropped.

    Here’s Bill Perry with VoteVets co-founder and chairman Jon Soltz along with some IVAW members:

    So who is Bill Perry, you might be asking. Well, he’s one of the original VVAW members and he testified at the first Winter Soldier hearings in 1971 (you know, with such luminaries as phony soldier Al Hubbard and John Kerry). He testified to his own misconduct which, if it happened, cost the lives of his own platoon as well as some innocent Vietnamese villagers;

    Bill Perry, 23, Pfc. (E-3), “A” Co., 1/506, 101st Airborne Division (November 1966 to August 1968)

    PERRY: I served in Vietnam from ’67 to ’68. I wouldn’t like to go too far into the horror stories you’ve been hearing about the last few days, but I would like to relate a few incidents. On March 5, 1968, in the province of Phuc Long, village of Song Be, a platoon of us, twenty-nine of us, were on a search and destroy mission. A few of us, who were considered expendable, were told to walk point.

    As we came up out of a bamboo thicket into a clearing, a woman with whom I and one of the other two people had previously had what you might call business transactions with concerning marijuana, informed us of an imminent ambush on the part of the local forces. Myself and two others ran into her home with her. We weren’t sure whether she was _____ us or what, but we were scared so we ran into her home. The rest of the platoon came up out of the valley into the clearing and was ambushed. We were isolated pretty well from the rest of the platoon while they were getting shot up. And when an NCO came up to look into the house where we were kind of looking out the door with the woman, the NCO automatically figured that we must be VC prisoners and he shot her up. She had a very young child inside her bomb shelter. Every Vietnamese home has to have a bomb shelter. The ambush actually lasted about two or three minutes, and the platoon got pretty well shot up. For about five hours they called in artillery and air strikes and pretty well demolished the town of Song Be. Finally when enough reinforcements came, they went out to sweep the area. They decided to throw fragmentation, or white phosphorus grenades, inside of each bunker regardless of what was going down in any bunker. We tried to stop them from fragging other bunkers where we could hear screams or moans or whatever, but they were really into it.

    There was another incident in mid-July 1968 in the vicinity of Nui Ba Den where we had been in about two days of steady combat. We had found a lot of bodies, some killed by air strikes and some killed by small arms fire. And the military fear, you know, came through once again in their mutilation of bodies. They were very much into cutting patches and numbers on dead bodies in this particular incident. I could go on with more horror stories, but like we all know what happens. You can hear it from the other GIs and when the rest of the people on the panel finish, I’d like to go into a little of what causes people to act this way, why people act this way, and what we can do to combat people acting this way. Thank you.

    Being a chickenshit coward, Perry hid in a mamasan’s hut without warning his platoon about the ambush (kind of the job of the point team). If he had done his job and warned the platoon, maybe the wanton killing of everything that moved in the area wouldn’t have happened. Then Perry went on to tell the tale of infiltrating Cambodia, apparently just for the sake of infiltrating Cambodia.

    MODERATOR: Perry, before we go on to the next one, you mentioned something before about an order received by the higher up and crossing across the national borders. Could you mention something on that?

    PERRY: It was very well known that we were within two klicks of Cambodia which is about a mile and two-tenths. Very often we went on search and destroy missions directly west as far as 8-10 klicks and back. We were definitely going into Cambodia.

    MODERATOR: Did you ever make contact in Cambodia? Did you ever make contact when you crossed the border?

    PERRY: No, I didn’t.

    So what was the point of that? There were no incidents in Cambodia so there’d be no reports of operations in Cambodia. Remember this was 1972 – one of the popular charges to make against the Nixon Administration that year was that they’d illegally extended military operations in to Cambodia. According to Perry’s service claims, he was out of the Army before Nixon was even elected.

    The end result of all the Winter Soldier in 1971 testimony according to Scott Swett;

    The Army’s Criminal Investigative Division (CID) had opened cases for 43 WSI “witnesses” whose claims, if true, would qualify as crimes. An additional 25 Army WSI participants had criticized the military in general terms, without sufficient substance to warrant any investigation.

    The 43 WSI CID cases were eventually resolved as follows: 25 WSI participants refused to cooperate, 13 provided information but failed to support the allegations, and five could not be located. No criminal charges were filed as a result of any of the investigations.

    So Perry’s story was pretty much bullshit. Again, these are the people behind IVAW.

  • VVAW/IVAW links: Scott Camil [Jonn]

    This is probably one of the most symbolic pictures of the relationship between the Iraq Veterans Against the War and the old Vietnam veterans Against the War – Scott Camil and Clifton Hicks in bed together;

    Here’s a video I found of Camil at the Winter Soldier II hearings;

    Clifton Hicks was one of the IVAW members who testified at the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, MD  I dealt with his narrative over a year ago. But some of you might not know or remember Scott Camil from the VVAW. Camil was one of the Gainsville Eight who skated on a conspiracy charge after the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami when the FBI pre-emptively stopped the VVAW from attacking public safety elements of Miami and Miami Beach. From a Time Magazine article at the time;

    “Fire teams” using crossbows, wrist-rocket sling shots, automatic weapons and homemade grenades would roam the streets of Miami attacking police, knocking out electric transformers, and firebombing stores. According to FBI Informer William Lemmer, those bizarre, bloody plans to disrupt the Republican National Convention last year were hatched by a group of Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. Lemmer says he attended a secret meeting in May 1972 in a Gainesville, Fla., attic, where plans for the disruption were discussed and the plotters demonstrated the use of crossbows, carbines and explosives.

    Lemmer’s story was a major factor in the arrest of six members of the V.V.A.W. in July 1972 on charges of conspiring and crossing state lines to incite a riot (subsequently, another vet and a civilian ally were also charged).

    They got away with it because they didn’t actually do it, thanks to the FBI. But that’s not all about Scott Camil. He was known as Scott the Assassin because of his proposal to murder pro-war Congressmen and Senators. From the book, Unfit for Command;

    Known as Scott the Assassin, Camil was a firebrand within the VVAW ranks. He advocated the creation of VVAW assassination squads who could emulate the CIA Phoenix Program in Vietnam. The idea, as proposed by Camil, was that the VVAW assassination squads would kill politicians who opposed ending the war, beginning with prominent senators.

    From a 2004 Sun Times article;

    Another source is an October 20,1992, oral history interview of Scott Camil on file at the University of Florida Oral History Archive. In it, Mr. Camil speaks of his plan for an alternative to Mr. Kerry’s idea of symbolically throwing veterans’ medals over the fence onto the steps of the Capitol during the Dewey Canyon III demonstration in Washington in April of 1971.

    “My plan was that, on the last day we would go into the [congressional] offices we would schedule the most hardcore hawks for last ­ and we would shoot them all,” Mr. Camil told the Oral History interviewer. “I was serious.”

    These are the people behind the IVAW.

  • Robert Dennen: Phony sailor in West Chester, PA (UPDATED)

    Several weeks ago, someone sent me some pictures of Robert Dennen, a frequent anti-war protester in West Chester, PA. This person told me that Dennen claimed to be a Navy veteran and asked me to identify the medals he was wearing;

    The only one I could identify is the American Campaign Medal – it was a World War II medal awarded for service between Dec. 7, 1941 and March 2, 1946. The other two medals I couldn’t find anywhere on the internet. So I ran the guy’s name through Military dot Com and came up completely empty.

    You can tell by the black T-shirt, he’s a member of the Delaware Valley Veterans for America, he appears on their website protesting John McCain and Sarah Palin in Philadelphia. That’s him on the viewer’s far right;

    The Delaware Valley Veterans For America’s website is unsurprisingly plastered with pictures and events of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Vets For Peace.

    Someone sent me another picture of Dennen wearing the same medals and a Vets For Peace pin on his cap;

    And a picture of him claiming to be a gay veteran in West Chester, PA demanding “whats due” gays;

    In this picture from Skye, that looks like his hat and his trademark woodland camouflage, but he’s hiding behind a very confusing sign;

    I’m told his distinctive hat with the buttons stuck in it have earned him the nickname “Pinhead” from the West Chester Sheepdogs.

    So there’s really no doubt that he’s trying to pass himself off as a veteran, but his medals and the lack of a record say otherwise. So I sent his information to our new friends at POW Net. This is what I got back;

    Instead of listing him as “discharged” it says he was “released from active duty” and about half-way between his third and fourth year. That indicates some sort of malfeasance. His rank is SR – Seaman Recruit, an E-1. Again, indicative of some bad behavior – no one stays an E-1 for 3 and a half years.

    In the awards section, it lists none – not even fire guard ribbons. Now as I previously mentioned, during his participation in protests, he wears an American Campaign Medal which is for service between 1941 and 1946. His actual service is from 1956 to 1960. I still don’t know what the other two are, if anyone has a clue, please let me know.

    His sea assignments were on the destroyers  USS Courtney in the North Atlantic and USS Hull in the Western Pacific.

    But there’s a common thread running through many of these anti-war veterans – they all seem to be malingerers and common criminals who can’t conform to the good order and discipline of the military – no matter when they served. And apparently, they can’t help but wear medals they didn’t earn.

    I can’t wait to get back some of these FOIA requests.

    Added: Someone sent me a close up of Pinhead’s hat. Click it;

    UPDATED: Someone sent me a closer look at Pinhead’s medals;

    It looks like an older version of the Coast Guard Good Conduct Medal;

    So, we’ve got this dork wearing one medal that was issued while he was in grade school and a Coast Guard Medal – he was in the Navy.

  • Another Fake Hero Busted

    After Jonn’s expose of the IVAW hero’s doctoring of his military record I found it interesting that the front page of the San Antonio Express News had yet another story of a fake hero.

    Meet Brian Culp. Brian has a very heroic story. He was a Ranger in Somalia, a winner of two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with “V” device for valor, a disabled veteran and now running an organization called Veteran Adventures.

    The problem is that it is all a frigging lie.

    This is beyond the scumbag that is Geoff Millard, this ass clown is going to prison.
    Sadly, the story is not that unusual.

    Boasting a military record that included two Purple Hearts, decorations for valor and combat service in Somalia with the Army Rangers, Brian Culp seemed the perfect war hero to be honored last year as grand marshal in LaVernia’s patriotic parade.

    “He was very deserving because of his military experience, battles and honors. And he had gotten hurt,” said Merrie Monaco, president of the Lions Club that sponsors the Bluebonnet Fest Parade.

    The good people of LaVernia, Texas honored him for his service and his quest to take care of veterans. Naturally, Brian was enjoying the local celebrity.

    Then one day he pulled into a gas station near my home with his fake Purple Heart plates and his 201 file displayed on his vehicle.

    Picking that particular gas station that day was an unfortunate decision for our hero.

    But it was a chance encounter with a former Army Ranger last year that led to Culp finally being exposed. Highway patrolman Derome West said he came upon Culp while patrolling U.S. 281 near Bulverde.

    “A pickup with a Ranger tab and Purple Heart plates pulled into the Valero in front of me, so I pulled up beside him,” West recalled.

    “He started telling me about how he was in the 3rd Ranger Battalion in Mogadishu, and we got to talking a little bit. There’s a little bit of a vetting process,” he said of the Ranger fraternity.
    But Culp’s story didn’t check out with other Rangers who were in the rescue mission made famous in the movie, “Black Hawk Down.” His references also failed him and there was no record of his being in Somalia.

    “I have a copy of the joint meritorious unit award that was awarded to all the Rangers in Somalia in support of Operation Gothic Serpent, aka ‘Black Hawk Down,’ and his name is not on it. I can state with 100 percent certainty, he was not there,” said former Ranger Raleigh Cash of Illinois, who participated in the Somali operation.

    Brian will be sentenced on December 29th, he faces three years in prison. Oh and this is Texas, he will get every day of it.

  • Geoff Millard; the latest IVAW phony soldier (Updated)

    The anti-war movement loves the Iraq Veterans Against the War. In an interview, Head Hag of Code Pink bragged that IVAW gives the anti-war movement credibility;

    “The vet groups are our street cred,” a California-based anti-war activist tells me at the group’s barbecue. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of feminist anti-war group Code Pink, says the veterans’ group appeals to the American glorification of the military, even within the anti-war movement. “People who have been part of a war that I consider immoral and illegal still have more legitimacy than people who were against the war from the very beginning and refused to fight in it,” she explains, sitting in the vets’ living room while her college-age cohorts chat with the veterans and eat hamburgers and sausages. “They command more of a sense of authority and more of a sense of understanding of what’s actually happening on the ground.”

    Let’s take a look at the credibility that Medea values so much, shall we?

    The president of the Washington, DC Chapter, Geoff Millard, for example, is a real gadfly on the Washington, DC Leftist scene. I saw him going into the William Ayers book signing last month. Here’s a picture of him sitting behind then-candidate Barack Obama at a speech leading up to the election in Pennsylvania;

    This is his profile on the IVAW website;

    In his profile, Millard brags “Along with a peace delegation Geoff became the first Iraq war veteran to meet with members of the Iraqi parliament about their 26-point peace plan. Also Geoff has traveled Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iran meeting with Iraqi refugees at every chance.”

    But he’s being modest. He’s also addressed the Socialist World Forum in Venezuela and fawned over such luminaries as Hugo Chavez and Cindy Sheehan. Here’s a picture of him marching with Medea Benjamin and Cindy Sheehan a few years back exercising his “street cred” for the anti-war movement;

    My buddy/alter ego Robin at Chickenhawk Express did some extensive research on Millard a few years back when he first started making the IVAW scene while he was AWOL. Robin includes his history as a malingerer complaining constantly about his bouts of pain from a old wrestling injury  – he claimed an Iraqi doctor said he should go back to the States, but Army doctors disagreed.

    After he finished his tour of Iraq and the Army wouldn’t give him a medical discharge, he became a conscientious objector and went AWOL for nine months. Familiar story, isn’t it? It’s always some sort malfeasance on the part of IVAW members that preceeded their “conscientious objectors” or “resisters” status.

    Notice, like most of the other folks in IVAW, he lists himself as a Sergeant. In addition, he claims he served in Germany, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq. It sounds more like a flight path than a career path.

    I got a hold of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on Geoffrey a few weeks back and it was a little light on information;

    It said that he is a specialist and not a sergeant as he claimed, and his awards were only two medals and ribbon – quite a bit different than what he sports in public;

    That’s a lot more than what’s in records, no? Need a closer look?

    That’s three awards of the Meritorious Service Medal (MSM) on top – but none of them are in the FOIA.

    Well, see, I’m a fair guy, so I decided before I posted anything, I wanted to give Geoffrey a chance to respond – actually, TSO and Uncle Jimbo advised me to proceed cautiously.

    Thanks to some prodding from  Army Sergeant, I’m sure, he responded the same day, and sent me one of his three DD214s – of course, he sent the best one of the three, the one that says he earned all of those medals and that he’s a sergeant. The only thing I’ve altered is his Social Security Number, his mother’s name and address and his home address;

    Now that would seem to settle it, right? Well, not quite. I sent the DD214 to my new friends at POW Net and, eagle eyes that they are, they noticed right off that even though he has awards for foreign service in block 13, there’s no foreign service time in block 12f.

    The folks at POW NET sent the FOIA request back through St Louis with the DD214 Millard sent me.

    Guess what? The Army sent the same FOIA information back even though they had his DD214. His form 2-1 doesn’t mention any service in Iraq.

    The folks at POW NET are forwarding the FOIA and the DD214 Millard sent me to the FBI for further investigation.

    1stCAVRVN11B emailed this picture of Millard wearing a CIB, which also isn’t in the DD214 or the FOIA report;

    He explained in his email to me;

    [The DD214] will not show a CIB that is a longer story of my being pined [sic] in Iraq but not having it on paper back home because of Army FUBAR.  I was unsure about wearing it and I admit I did once but never felt comfortable with it on.

    Well, the real reason he should have felt uncomfortable about wearing a CIB is because he never earned one no matter who “pinned” him – it wasn’t an Army FUBAR. To earn a CIB, a soldier has to be a qualified infantryman in the 11 or 18 series MOS and be serving in an infantry unit lower than brigade level. Millard was a 12B combat engineer not an 11 or 18 series, and he worked for a general – there are no generals below brigade level. I told him all of that in an email, but he didn’t see fit to respond.

    Millard wants the honors accorded an infantryman who served in combat without having to put up with the shit of actually being an infantryman. Stolen valor.

    So let’s recap the “street cred” of the anti-war movement; Millard claims to be a sergeant, the Army says he’s a specialist. He claims to have a chest full of medals, the Army says he has two and a ribbon. Millard claims to have been awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, even though he was never a combat infantryman and the Army disagrees with him. Millard claims to have served on the Mexican border, Germany, Qatar, Kuwait and in Iraq and the Army has no record of him ever leaving New York State except for basic training and advanced individual training.

    Oh, and the FBI will be investigating him for falsifying his military records.

    At least he’s got experience doing a perp walk – he may need that skill.

    Now, I’ll admit that I have a hard-on for Millard since he tried to intimidate TSO and me at Winter Soldier by asking us for our blog URLs so they could monitor what we were writing about them from the inside. I’m pretty sure he didn’t ask any of the friendlier bloggers for that same consideration.

    Later, he threatened to throw TSO, Rurik and me out of Winter Soldier because TSO talked to a Washington Post reporter. Oh, and he made one of his minions remove me from the Congressional hearing room for Winter Soldier after I filmed him playing general’s aide before the hearings checking mikes and shuffling paper.

    So this post is my pay back – and that’s why it’s languished for three weeks in my draft folder waiting to get the facts just right. It’s been rewritten countless times and a number of people have contributed to it and they’re all credited.

    I’ve got several other records requests being processed, so you may see a spate of “phony soldier” posts in the next few months. Ya’all phony soldiers had better adjust your narratives.

    UPDATED: For all of you sharpshooters, someone sent me a clearer picture of his medals;

  • IVAW causes First Casualty in SF (Updated)

    Preaching to the choir, the Iraq Veterans Against the War took their worn and tired message to San Francisco for their performance recreation of what they call “First Casualty” which refers to the truth being the first casualty of war. They disrupted “Black Friday” shopping in Union Square for two hours before their press conference.

    Actually, it’s just a way to meet hairy-legged hippie chicks. I mean they can’t be serious. (You can click these pictures for a larger view)

    (more…)

  • Deserter applies for asylum in Germany

    Meet Andre Shepard, the latest in a short line of deserters from the US military. Shepard is unique in that he has applied for asylum to Germany. Asylum. As if he’s persecuted in his own country, instead of being one of the unique few who’re allowed to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Why did he desert? Well, because he had a revelation of sorts;

    Andre Shepherd, 31, who served in Iraq between September 2004 and February 2005 as an Apache helicopter mechanic in the 412th Aviation Support Battalion, has been living in Germany since deserting last year.

    “When I read and heard about people being ripped to shreds from machine guns or being blown to bits by the Hellfire missiles I began to feel ashamed about what I was doing,” Shepherd told a Frankfurt news conference Thursday.

    “I could not in good conscience continue to serve.”

    He was a mechanic in a support battalion (he’s not a flight line helicopter mechanic) that HEARD about people being ripped to shreds. Just ordinary people walking down the street minding their own business were suddenly being ripped to shreds for no apparent reason. Well, see that’s not all;

    The specialist was posted to Germany in 2005 where he undertook desk jobs, but he gradually began questioning the justification for the Iraq war and began worrying he would be sent back to serve there….

    He was worried he MIGHT be sent to Iraq. And he wasn’t even performing in a role that would have directly ripped perfectly innocent people walking down the street minding their own business. Actually his unit, the 412th Aviation Support Battalion, did go to to Iraq and they returned to Germany in September – but he didn’t know that when he deserted.

    So, instead of absconding to The Netherlands, or Spain, or Turkey, where his “asylum” application might have been seriously considered, Shepard is staying right in Germany, a country that has never accepted applications for asylum from Americans. Most likely because he has a fraulein in Germany whom he doesn’t want to take his eyes off for a second, lest she abscond with the next guy in uniform she meets.

    There’s always an ulterior motive for these guys, it’s never as simple as their conscience – and it usally relates to thoughts from their “other head”.

    Hat tip to someone for the tip.