Phony plague
So you don’t like my phonies, here are some from other folks;
Our buddy, JD at Professional Soldiers who says he focuses on folks who claim they’re SF, sends us a link to one, Wayne Ticknor, Certified CrossFit Trainer Liar and Fraud.
JD also sends Armando Cordoba Special Forces POW and his riveting tale of daring-do.
TMan sends a link to another, Greg Valentini, who can’t seem to get his basic, easily verfied facts rights. He fooled the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal (like that’s hard).
Category: Phony soldiers
There were less than 200 US soldiers directly involved in the assault at Tora Bora. To date, I’ve met almost a thousand of them.
Tora Bora has become the phony soldier’s Woodstock; every aging hippie on Earth was there. No shit!
I was a POW at Tora Bora. I missed most of the fight as the enemy shoved Nan bread up my ass to try to break me. I escaped with only 11 fingers, the other 3 having been ripped off with garden sheers.
Kinda like the guy who runs VeriSeal or a similar site who said, “There were 500 SEALs in Vietnam, and I’ve met all 20,000 of them.”
@TSO: LMFAO!! That’s some funny shit right there. I needed that.
I still like the guy I met at my university claiming to have been in the Battle of Falujah. One of the companies in my BN was in that battle, C 2/162 from the ORARNG. I know most of the knuckleheads in that unit and have heard every version of every event in the battle. He didn’t know a damn thing about what happened and tried to claim that I didn’t know what I was talking about because I wasn’t there.
Well, I wasn’t there. But that unit was about an hour from my HOR, so I used to go there every now and then to drill since it was right next to a University full of fine women who don’t wear a lot in the summer.
The dumbass didn’t even know what I was talking about when I mentioned the Marines or SEALs that were picked up in the battle. He actually thought the entire point was to “assault” the mosque…
Dumbass.
The bad news is that he’s using his “combat experience” to sue the VA. The good news is that he won’t be homeless after the charges are filed.
Typical for a plague; not enough hospitals to go around.
In this case — MENTAL hospitals.
WTF, is it the change in the seasons that bring these idiots out of the woodwork? Or, has the ACLU sent out a form letter to all of the shitbirds saying it was OK to go out can claim wild shit, just because they can?
I still say:”kick em’ in the balls.”
Good lord. Do they REALLY think they can get away with this?
Jonn you guys really should do an extended primer for folks in what to look for in stolen valor cases, and keep it up somewhere on the page as a permanent feature: “TAH Guide to Spotting Stolen Valor”
Leeching off the public goodwill accorded America’s (or any nations’) decorated veterans is cruel, cowardly, and most times the theif of valor is almost impossible for average folk to discern, much less expose.
True heros like Marine Cpl J.B Kerns, who came home this week to a rapturous welcome in Ararat VA minus two legs and an arm, are unmistakable and easy to spot.
But other people are goblin-cruel, and their hoaxes arent so easy to detect without the discerning eye of one who has served.
As a result, good people raised to respect and admire military commendation get taken advantage of by these frauds, who do great harm to society by threatening to cheapen real public respect and affection earned in battle by real vets with real medals.
But the interwebs now affords a chance for expert opinion and knowlegde to coalesce and expose stolen valor. My dad was Air Force and my grandad Army, and I enjoy my daily visits/reads of this blog. So I basically know what to look for but so many folks dont and I think strongly that if you guys did something with TSO Zero and everybody weighing in on what to look for, it would be a useful and widely read thing, even if you stick to the basic observable fundamentals. It could be all serious-like or it could be toungue in cheek. But if you build it, they will come.
And the internet-reading public who are concerned about this will be better educated, aware and more alert to scammers so that honest vets will continue to enjoy the affection of the country their sacrifices earned for them.
Just a thot.
So one of the bloggers at professionalsoldiers.com sent a letter to author of the Armando Cordoba article. The reporter stated that when questioned, Cordoba produced a VA Medical card stamped, “POW”. Of course it is well documented that VA clerks don’t ask for proof before stamping the POW monicker on someone’s card, and then the phony uses that meritless claim to receive benefits from the VA. Apparently the VA is now investigating Cordoba, I don’t know if he has actually received monitary benefits for his POW claims. But should we surprised if he has? Of course all of this could be solved if VA clerks would simply check the established database of POW’s before they go crazy with their POW stamp.
[…] Cordoba busted November 19th, 2011 Back in September, we mentioned a Stolen Valor case that our buddy, JD at Professional Soldiers, was working on, in regards to Armando Cordoba […]
This information conflicts somewhat with my current understanding of how the laws treat Condo Declarations. While I’m only somewhat familiar with the FHA laws, I would have assumed that anything that was in the Condo Declaration before they moved in would be enforceable. Condo’s often enact rules that are more strict the State Laws or County Ordiances but I always thought that if they were not discriminatory, then they were fair and enforceable.