If you suspect someone is lying about military service

and especially about being disabled from military service... is there a public records way to get the facts?





My first clue is that he is a Teabagger; my 2nd clue is that he knocks 10 years off his age on face-book.

...check old newspaper records for birth announcements in the year he says he was born on FB. I'm sure someone will have a better answer, but that's all I got. :shrug:

born in 1955, rather than 1965.




And while nothing about his age means he couldn't have served in the military, I think he's trying to make it seem as if he has a ptsd type disability, when in fact there is almost no way that he ever saw action, due to his age.

beyond that, he's a shyster, and a Michelle Malkin fan, so I'm naturally suspicious.

served during war time, but never left U.S. soil

If he answers, post it. The ole personnel puke tech/manager should be able to tell you if he's a bs artist.

If this person you refer to has PTSD, it need not have come about due to combat while he was in the military. It may not even be service related.

Any near death incident can cause PTSD. Many of the survivors who escaped the Twin Towers during 9-11 were treated for PTSD. There are also many Policemen and Firemen who suffer from PTSD due to the hazardous nature of their work.

Furthermore there appears to be a re-configuring of what falls under the term PTSD when it comes to treatment. Within the past few years Depleted Uranium poisoning was added by our armed forces as a form of PTSD for instance.

(btw: I am a Viet Nam Era Vet who never set foot in Viet Nam. I was fortunate to have spent my tour of duty over in the lovely country of Germany. If I have any PTSD, I would be blaming it not on my military service but instead on the Clinton/Obama wars in the DUs GDP about a year ago.)

I think Walter would get in his face and say "I've seen a lot of people who served, dude. and this guy's a fake. A fucking gold bricker." Then toss him out of his wheelchair. Or rather, tell him he's faking, and make him prove otherwise.

You look like an ass if you're wrong, but Walter can live with that.

this guy isn't claiming to be a Navy Seal, but look at this:

quote


VeriSEAL.org, an organization that verifies the backgrounds of Special Operations Forces personnel, has exposed more than 35,000 phony Navy SEALS. This is truly amazing, because only 11,000 men actually graduated from the SEAL training program, and its predecessor, the Underwater Demolition Team, since 1947. In other words, there are three times as many wannabes as actual SEALs.

I know someone that is an 'injured vet'.

He was disabled out after a car crash in Germany, driving back to base drunk with three buddies.

My daughter has a friend that was disabled out of the Marines; she blew out a knee and never fully recovered and got a medical discharge. She tried like hell to stay in, but just couldn't re-pass the physical.

One was honorable, the other less so.

I wonder about people that lie about small things...they are usually dishonest about big things, too.

I don't personally know the guy, I only know some of what he's up to, and what he is presenting to other people (some of it blatantly false).

From what he told a friend, he's likely trying to claim some sort of mental issue; he vaguely made the case, apparently, when she told him she had ptsd (from abuse in her past) that he too had ptsd; sort of a "we understand each other" kind of thing... which I knew was absolute bullshit.

I pressed her a little about what his ptsd came from if he indeed had it. She obviously had not pressed him for any detailed info (sometimes you'd think she wants to be scammed), but made it seem as if it had something to do with an airplane jump. Of all people, she should know that you don't get ptsd from a one time accident.

Of course, he could have blown his knee out or some-such (he gets around fine, and is very active now), but again, I'm suspicious that he was even in the military.


He has a criminal rap sheet, and the first thing you find on it is an alias. You can see my reasons for suspicion.

I'd bet money on his lack of military service.

Ant ex-serviceman I've ever met could rattle off the exact dates of when they entered and left the service, every place in the world they were stationed, achieved rank, who they served under, etc.

Bet this guy can't or won't, and say it's because it's 'too painful' to remember.

Bullshit.

He's afraid he'll come upo against someone that was actually there, and get called on it.

to do with having been in the delayed enlistment program. I mean, I remember, but I have to think about it for a while. Some things just don't stick with me (for example, no matter how many times I refresh my knowledge of long division, for the most part, I still 'divide' by a number by guessing a likely number and multiplying, to see how close I get, then modifying as necessary :) )

About this guy, it doesn't matter, because I'm certainly not going to confront someone unless I already know the answer.

He could well have served, so I wouldn't want to claim otherwise. But I am suspicious.

He could even have a disability, although I have a strong suspicion otherwise. Also, he seems the type that would have faked or overplayed a benign injury.

http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/standard-form-180.html

Also try the VA.

http://www.va.gov/

If he is lying about this, he is an idiot. It's far too easy to check.

**********QUOTE********
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Dennehy

Rather than immediately chase his dreams of stage and screen, Dennehy enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1959, actively serving until 1963. Although he said in numerous interviews that he had fought in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, even telling harrowing tales of his service there, it was revealed in the 1998 book Stolen Valor by B.G. Burkett that Dennehy had never served overseas at all during his time in the military. Later that year, Dennehy admitted to the tabloid The Globe "I lied about serving in Vietnam and I'm sorry. That was very wrong of me. There is no real excuse for that. I was a peace-time Marine, and I got out in 1963 without ever serving in Vietnam. I started the story that I had been in 'Nam, and I got stuck with it. Then I didn't know how to set the record straight."

However, in 2007, he once again told a reporter tales of his service in the Vietnam War, this time to Glenna Whitley of the Wall Street Journal.<3>


********UNQUOTE********

1) Teabagger. Well, at least a third of vets according to the VFW are strong wingnuts.

2) Each person's own case history is not known except usually to the individual and the VA. There are mental/emotional wounds that are not visible.

3) Somebody posted submitting a Form 180 to the VA asking for somebody's records. I think you have to be the veteran asking for their own records, or family if the vet is not mentally capable or deceased. I don't think anybody can just ask for anybody's records. But the people who tracked down DENNEHY did it through a Freedom of Information request.

Now, there are certainly some cons out there. Besides the famous DENNEHY con, in my locality there was a dude claiming to be a Korean vet who ran for Commander of the VFW, and when he was checked out for the election, he was found not to have been overseas at all, therefore not even eligible to be a member of the VFW. It was a pathetic case. He stayed local, had to face people all the time. Every bar he went to there were whispers to the uninitiated, telling his story. He was always sitting alone.


But coming at this from a different angle, one of my peeves with my own co-veterans, is the way the less educated, obnoxious ones try to put newcomers to "tests" ---asking, "What was your M.O.S?" That's an Army term, having to do, I think, with your Army occupational code, what job you were performing. The first time they asked me, a NAVY dude, that, I had ZERO idea what the fuck they were talking about, and only knew that my stock was down in these idiots' eyes. For the record, the parallel Navy jargon for M.O.S. is "RATING." RATE is your pay grade. Then again, they dropped a test question like, "Did you like Tan Son Nuit(sp) Air Force Base?" This was the entry point to and departure point from Vietnam. But, like, I was there those TWO times, one year apart, and, yes, it was an important turning point in my life, but isolated and soon overcome by the REST OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE!1

I actually now carry a copy of my DD214 in a plastic cover sheet in my wallet. I haven't actually had to use it because the local yokels know me by now, but I have really fantasized about taking it out, opening it up, and SLAPPING IT ON THEIR FUCKING FACES!1

Also, a lot of these dudes have spent every waking minute except for drinking, or in addition to it, watching EVERY AVAILABLE MOVIE about Vietnam. Frankly, I and everybody I knew during my 4 yrs of service just wanted to get out and get OVER it, then went to school and work and kept a distance from the VFW type reminders. ***********************HooKAY!1 Got carried away there!1

I don't know how a historian can do this sort of thing.

It's also something of a mystery to me why someone wants to be known as a veteran of a war.

Is the purpose to claim that the idea of war is a good and noble thing?

The one person I knew who was killed in Vietnam was an ass when he was alive and he certainly didn't become less of an ass by being killed.

I understand, of course, that many people were compelled to go to the war, but it neither made them good people or bad people.

There's Ron Ridenhour, of course, but his fame derives from the fact that there was a William Calley. I hope that no one is here to announce that Calley is a good and noble man because he served in Vietnam. One suspects, conversely, that Ritenhour would have been a good and noble man even if he never left Arizona.

Kurt Vonnegut was certainly a veteran (of the Second World War), having been captured at the Battle of the Bulge and having been bombed, as a prisoner of war, at Dresden, one of the worst fire bombings in human history.

His most famous book - which should have one the Nobel Prize in literature, and probably would have had he not made fun of Swedish cars - was Slaughterhouse Five in which he specifically made a point of telling everyone that he had instructed his sons never to participate in war under any circumstances. He made it pretty clear that war, even a so called good war, is at best an assinine adventure.

His advice to his sons, I think, was damn good advice.