{"id":39958,"date":"2014-02-22T07:36:24","date_gmt":"2014-02-22T12:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39958"},"modified":"2014-02-22T07:36:24","modified_gmt":"2014-02-22T12:36:24","slug":"sergeant-rafael-peraltas-moh-denied-once-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39958","title":{"rendered":"Sergeant Rafael Peralta’s MOH denied once again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ex-PH2 sends us a link from NBC News<\/a> which reports that Marine Corps Sergeant Rafael Peralta has been denied the Medal of Honor once again, this time by Chuck Hagel;<\/p>\n

Hagel is the third successive defense secretary to turn down the award for Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who fellow Marines said smothered an exploding grenade under his body as he lay dying of a head wound during a battle in Iraq in 2004. He was 25.<\/p>\n

Five members of Peralta’s squad nominated Peralta for the medal, and their cause was strongly backed by former Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine veteran who represented Peralta’s hometown in Congress.<\/p>\n

But medical examiners ruled that Peralta \u2014 who immigrated illegally to the U.S. and joined the Marines when he got his legal residency card \u2014 was already dead and couldn’t have pulled the grenade underneath his body.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I wasn’t there, but then either were the “medical examiners” who say he didn’t pull the grenade under his body. But we get this link from our buddy, Nicki, from the Washington Post<\/a>, wherein two people who say they were there testify that Peralta didn’t do the deed;<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has always bugged me,\u201d said Davi Allen, a Marine who was wounded in the grenade blast and who said he watched it detonate near, but not underneath, Peralta. After years of sticking to the prevailing narrative, Allen, 30, said he recently decided to tell the truth. \u201cI knew it\u2019s not the truth. But who wants to be the one to tell a family: \u2018Your son was not a hero\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

Reggie Brown, another Marine who was with Peralta that day, said that as members of the squad scrambled away from the blast, one of them said that claiming that Peralta had jumped on the grenade would be a good way to honor his legacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can remember people saying it would be the right thing to do, to say that he did more than he did,\u201d Brown, 31, said in an interview, speaking publicly about the case for the first time. \u201cI disagree with everything my fellow Marines proclaim to have seen.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like I said, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened, but it’s strange that five people testify to what two others deny happened. I’d guess it’s all a matter of perspective. I just think it’s f’d up that medical examiners have more of a say in this than eye witnesses- and that Hagel would put more weight to the “experts”‘ who weren’t there rather than the troops on the ground, especially given his background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ex-PH2 sends us a link from NBC News which reports that Marine Corps Sergeant Rafael Peralta … Sergeant Rafael Peralta’s MOH denied once again<\/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":[184,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marine-corps","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39958","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=39958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}