WaPo hit job on former SEAL

The Washington Post may have outdone itself.

There is a Republican former Navy SEAL name of Tim Sheehy who is running against Democrat Jon Tester for one of Montana’s Senate seats. Tester is the sole Democrat holding a state-wide office in Montana. Sheehy, who purportedly the first midshipmen to graduate from Ranger training Candidate site  and went on to become a SEAL and serve in multiple combat zones overseas.

The story is that he injured himself in a fall at  Glacier National Park and when his arm was X-rayed, there was a bullet in it.  Then it gets hinky: he at first told the park ranger in 2015 that his revolver had been dropped and went off (the ol’ Alec Balwin defense) and the bullet was from it. Recently he said the bullet originally hit him in Afghanistan in 2012, and to avoid a teammate possibly facing charges, he did not seek medical assistance at the time and just left the bullet in place. Okay, now we are off the beaten path, but over a decade later WaPo is dragging him as hard as possible.

The Post, which began the report by claiming Sheehy left the bullet in his arm “as evidence of his toughness,” spoke with several individuals who called Sheehy’s story into question. Public records reviewed by Fox News Digital reveal these same individuals combined have donated thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party.

Nice assumption there. Never met anyone who said “leave it there, I’m tough”. Have seen many cases where the docs said “I could get it out but would do more harm than leaving it”; don’t think those two are equivalent.  (Might remember Greg LeMond, who won his last Tour de France  with some shotgun pellets imbedded in his HEART.) Not being a doc or having access to his records, I can’t say. If anything, I would think a .45 at close range should have gone through if it didn’t hit bone but a ricochet might easily have stopped part way through.

Most notably, he told a Glacier National Park ranger in 2015 that he accidentally shot himself when his revolver fell and fired in the park. When the Post reached out to ask about a citation he’d received for the incident, he said he’d lied to the ranger in order to cover up a 2012 war wound, possibly caused by friendly fire, that he’d never reported in an attempt to protect his platoonmates from a possible military investigation.

The story he told the Post is at least inconsistent with Sheehy’s other public statements regarding his war wounds. He told the Post he wasn’t sure if his injury was the result of friendly fire or not, but in his 2023 book, “Mudslingers,” he wrote that he was hit by a “friendly ricochet bullet.” On the campaign trail, the Post reported, Sheehy has described being shot multiple times during the course of his service. The campaign later told the Post he was “shot” three times but wounded by a bullet only once — on the other two occasions, the campaign said, bullets glanced off of his body armor and his radio.  MT Free Press

Maybe I am not too bright – I see no inconsistency in his descriptions of being shot – you get hit yet the bullet deflects and you don’t have a wound – you damn sure got shot, and got really lucky. No question of being shot, though. So if a couple of lucky bullets tagged him but he got away unscathed, and another bullet possibly ricocheted and got him – that’s getting shot three times, and injured once. Bullet possibly from a friendly? SEALs like .45s, and know that what the man called “tractor sized slugs moving at truck velocities” get the job done. Another SEAL with a .45? Highly possible. Possible negligent discharge in combat from a friendly? Not a combat vet, but I sure would believe it.

Now let’s look at WaPo’s list of impartial witnesses.

Upon looking at an X-ray of the wound, which was provided to the Post by Sheehy, Joseph V. Sakran, a Johns Hopkins trauma surgeon and longtime Democrat donor, raised questions about the Republican Senate candidate’s story. Sakran told the Post that Sheehy’s wound “probably depicts a bullet, but it is not possible to tell what type of weapon it came from nor the age of the wound.”

This is evidence of falsehood? Even if this guy founded “Doctors for Hillary” (which he did) while he is trying to impugn the wound, his choice of words is actually entirely accurate – yo may be able to tell a heavier .45 rifle bullet apart (BIG bullets) but modern .45 handguns typically all shoot a .452 bullet and the weight range is smaller – normally 185-230 grains. A 230 grain round nose from a .45 auto and a 230 grain round nose bullet from a .45 Colt cartridge – they don’t just look the same, they ARE the same bullets.

The outlet spoke with another expert, former Air Force attorney Rachel VanLandingham, who questioned Sheehy’s hesitancy to report the incident. She said she believes it to be “very unlikely a years-old potential ricochet injury would compel naval investigators to open any kind of investigation based on a park ranger’s report.”

Is that supposed to be condemnation? One thing, she claims to be a centrist moderate.

“Trump is a terrorist recruiting poster child. Tx for making America less safe & w/ less real power!” she wrote in 2017.Fox News

Sounds centrist to me.

There is a bunch of vets piling on to this “implausible” story: VoteVets. Don’t think I need to add anything to THEIR story.  MSNBC

If you judge a man by who his enemies are…I’m keeping an eye on Sheehy. He seems to piss off the people I like to see pissed off.

Category: 2024 Election, Politics, Veterans in the news