{"id":32239,"date":"2012-10-03T17:49:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T21:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32239"},"modified":"2012-10-03T17:49:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T21:49:46","slug":"hunter-to-army-did-you-award-soldiers-properly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32239","title":{"rendered":"Hunter to Army; Did you award soldiers properly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Gould at Army Times<\/a> sends us a link to his article about a possible discrepancy in the awards they’ve given soldiers. It seems that the data base the government was creating to prevent stolen valor for us, also included people who didn’t know they’d been awarded Silver Stars for their service in the recent wars. Former Marine, Congressman Duncan Hunter is asking tough questions of the Army Secretary; <\/p>\n

At least one of the nine, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, said that if he and two others were approved for the Silver Star, they were never told. Ronnie Raikes told Army Times he was badly wounded while on a team that in late 2001 infiltrated southern Afghanistan and protected Hamid Karzai, then a little known statesman hunted by the Taliban and now the country\u2019s president.<\/p>\n

Raikes said he and two others from the 11-member Operational Detachment Alpha 574 received the Bronze Star in 2002 for their actions. The team left Afghanistan after a friendly fire bomb attack that killed three soldiers and wounded Raikes and several others, as reported in the book, \u201cThe Only Thing Worth Dying For.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we did receive the Silver Star, it would be significant to me because it says the Army is doing right by us,\u201d said Raikes, 50, of Clarksville, Tenn. \u201cWe worked our asses off, and we didn\u2019t know then that Hamid Karzai would be president.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, they had been awarded Bronze Stars that appear to have been upgraded by the Army and many of the soldiers didn’t know about it. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s understandable that there were lapses in the system during World War II, though unconscionable, because that was not the age of technology we live in today,\u201d [Doug] Sterner said. \u201cWhy give awards if you don\u2019t keep track of them?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that’s the whole reason that Doug has been pushing for this database, curbing stolen valor being a secondary benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Gould at Army Times sends us a link to his article about a possible discrepancy … Hunter to Army; Did you award soldiers properly?<\/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":[198,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32239","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=32239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}