{"id":26516,"date":"2011-09-14T19:08:52","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T23:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=26516"},"modified":"2011-09-14T19:26:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T23:26:10","slug":"vets-vs-vets-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26516","title":{"rendered":"Vets vs. Vets in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

So there are these two guys in Florida who call themselves the Stolen Valor Task Force<\/a>. Their names are Chuck Winn and Ed Maxwell, and as near as I can tell they’re the only two guys in the SVTF. I’ve emailed with them and they’re the only two who answer at the email address. <\/p>\n

Somehow they got the idea that I want to join them, so they asked me for my DD214 and I sent it to them with a request that they send me theirs. After stalling for a few days, they finally did that and they are who they say they are. They sent me links to newspaper articles to prove that they are a legitimate Stolen Valor organization and they claim they outed eight phonies. But their main focus these days seem to be thwarting Republican Mike McCalister’s run at a Florida Senate seat.<\/p>\n

As I’ve written before, McCalister was a colonel at SOCOM – that part is indisputable. But somehow, that’s crime enough for retired Colonel Chuck Winn and former Captain Ed Maxwell to pester the living shit out of McCalister for petty-ass bullshit. Last time it was because he wore his uniform to a Republican Party dinner. When I showed Winn that he was completely authorized to wear his uniform to the function, it was as if I was writing to a retarded child. Winn sent the same quotes to prove I was wrong.<\/p>\n

Well, today i read that Ed Maxwell is making the allegation<\/a> that McCalister joined the National Guard to avoid the draft and Vietnam – the same old shit they tried to use against Dan Quayle; <\/p>\n

I can not conclusively prove Mike\u2019s actual motives for initially joining the Guard in 1971, but I can offer some strong evidence to base conclusions on. The facts are that in 1971, Guard units were extremely unlikely to be activated and sent to Vietnam. Joining the Guard gained exemption from the draft. After 4 to 6 months of active duty, a Reservist or Guardsman returned to their communities as part-time soldiers and resumed their normal lives. During the draft lottery, Selective Service drafted young men who drew lottery numbers, based on birth dates. Mike McCalister\u2019s number gave him a very high probability of being drafted, at about the same time he joined the Guard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the Miami Herald is more than willing to give Maxwell and Winn a platform from which they can launch these specious attacks. But, I can’t let this bullshit go unanswered. If joining the National Guard was such a good place to hide from service in Vietnam, it didn’t work for 6,140 Guardsmen<\/a> who served in the country, and it certainly backfired on the 101 who were killed. And hiding out in the Reserves didn’t work for the 5,977 Reservists who were killed in that war. <\/p>\n

Winn wrote that he couldn’t “conclusively prove Mike\u2019s actual motives for initially joining the Guard”, but that doesn’t stop him from shooting off his big mouth about shit he couldn’t prove.<\/p>\n

Maxwell and Winn, both Vietnam veterans, should give up their vendetta against another veteran and instead work to help get someone from our team in the Capitol. I know this will just start another flurry of emails telling me how illiterate I am, but it’s not anything I’m not accustomed to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So there are these two guys in Florida who call themselves the Stolen Valor Task Force. … Vets vs. Vets in Florida<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-in-politics","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}