Army Sergeant on Duncan/Strandlof

In case anyone is still interested in the Duncan/Strandlof saga, Army Sergeant, the IVAW member who TSO refers to as our “Frenemy” (I don’t refer to her as such, though), has published the IVAW’s unofficial excuse for their association with the complete fraud. By complete fraud, I refer to the fact that Jesse MacBeth at least spent 43 days in the Army, which is 44 days more than Duncan/Strandlof spent in the Marines.

Army Sergeant tells us that she isn’t the official source for any excuse the IVAW might decide to publish, mostly because Alex Bacon, the IVAW’s Executive Director, is engaged in a private matter. The official excuse has to have the approval of a guy who went went AWOL from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration or some other Department of Transportation agency. So we’ll be waiting on pins and needles from that expert.

In the interim, let’s look at Army Sergeant’s excuse. It typically avoids all of the issues that are involved. “Oh, I met him once, but it was so insignificant that I don’t remember the meeting.” So? When TSO and I went to Winter Soldier, we had to prove we were veterans by sending copies of our DD214. Duncan/Strandlof went to Winter Soldier, too. If TSO and I could figure out the technology to send our’s, why couldn’t IVAW force the same restrictions on their membership?

AS glosses over the fact that Duncan/Strandlof also attended IVAW Warrior Writer workshops and on at least two separate occasions attended Tower Guard events in Colorado. So we don’t get in a pissing contest over minutiae (as a discussion of facts usually becomes with Army Sergeant), here’s a screenshot of one of the few remaining Rick Duncan videos left on YouTube since IVAW started scrubbing the internet the other day to create a some deniability. This is a Warrior Writer video;

The end of the video has credits;

The videos are the YouTube channel of CSaction, following the links you end up at a webpage with this banner;

Here’s a picture from CSaction of Duncan and Garret Reppenhagen, former IVAW board member. The caption of the picture is “Mark shares a laugh with Joe and Garrett, while Hank keeps guard”.

So now that we’ve avoided the discussion that Duncan/Standlof wasn’t just some IVAW straphanger groupie off of the street as Army Sergeant tried to make him appear in her post, let’s look at some of AS’ other excuses, for example “We also did not have the amount of staffers perhaps necessary to handle the influx of members last year.” Yeah, Duncan joined in 2007 not “last year”, as the pictures and videos above prove. Nice try, though.

Some have charged, mainly in the milblogosphere, that we should have known that “Duncan” was a liar because of his claims. It’s something that’s really easy to say after the fact, but I’ll examine them.

Then she go on to dispute the “shot off finger” and the “openly gay battalion commander” stories with some stories about her mother’s reattached finger and some gay soldiers she’s known. Big whoop. My point about the gay BATTALION commander was that there probably hasn’t been a captain battalion commander in the Marines since World War Two. Did I really have to say that? Her mother’s finger was cut off with a power saw, not blown off by a bullet – why did I have to type that, too?

Now, I see in the comments of her post (comments were closed last night when I read it), TSO asked her some of the questions I presented here. Her response was to give an Infantry Salute (shrugging her shoulders while reciting “Ah dunno”.) The answer to Battalion Commander thing was;

As for 03 Battalion commanders in the Marine Corps, I really have no idea. I know that it wouldn’t happen in the Army, but the Marines are smaller. It wouldn’t occur to me to say I knew one way or another. I’m just speaking for self here.

Army Sergeant sounds like an abused spouse making excuses for her tormentor.

The “Bacon is incommunicado” is weak, too. How long does it take to tell a subordinate to write a piss-poor excuse for their incompetence? Staying true to form, I expect Bacon, if he releases a statement at all, will blame Kelly Dougherty, the previous ED, for Duncan.

I don’t really care what their statement says, however. The fact remains that fakes get into IVAW because their mentors, VFP and VVAW, are generally fakes, too. Their board is tied by purse strings to organizations that wouldn’t know a phony veteran if they were bit by one. The whole anti-war Left is more concerned about WHAT is being said than WHO is saying it since the whole ideology is based on emotions and not facts.

IVAW, nor their handlers, are willing to scrutinize their membership because scrutiny will run some off. I’m pretty sure we’ll see more of these phonies – and I’m doing my best to embarrass IVAW – you’d think they would want to get ahead of me.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Phony soldiers, Usual Suspects