Friday - December 04, 2009

You’d Better Watch Out

Military impostors, beware: A Web site has been launched to root out fraudulent veterans and fakers in fatigues.

ReportStolenValor.org aims to expose people who fabricate or embellish military accomplishments by making it easier to report suspected Stolen Valor Act offenders to federal authorities and local media outlets.

AMVETS, an organization representing more than 250,000 veterans, will unveil the site Friday.

“As a veteran myself, it’s deeply offensive when someone claims to have served in uniform when they have not,” said Jay Agg, AMVET’s national communication director. “It’s just fundamentally wrong and an affront to all veterans.”

The Web site will also feature a link to the Military Times Hall of Valor, a comprehensive database of more than 26,000 military awards for valor searchable by service member, award and conflict.

The Stolen Valor Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2006, amended the provisions of previous laws concerning unauthorized usage, manufacture or sale of military decorations and medals. A violation of the law is a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a $150,000 fine.

I am saddened that such a site even needs to exist, but it does. And while many old soldiers tend to exaggerate a bit when they tell their tales, that’s not what this is about. This is about the “heroes” that the anti-war left has championed, that turn out not to be heroes at all. Some of them, many of them, turn out never to have even been in uniform. That’s happened time and time again, and they’ve been debunked time and time again, yet the MSM often forgets to give us that follow on story. They’ll highlight this guy and his message, give it airplay, but when a few weeks later it’s found that he’s a fraud, they don’t tell us that. Small news, relegated to page D35 at best.

This is about the folks who lie about their service at job interviews. This is about stopping the phonies who claim the moral high ground because “I was there” when they weren’t.

It’s a great idea, and I really wish something like this was around a decade ago. But huge databases take time and money to build. I can guarantee that this one will have it’s teething problems too, but it should be pretty smooth after half a year or so.
I don’t know how far or how deep the citations database is, but it sure would be nice if it was exhaustive. Just so that folks could check up on things, like congressmen who wounded themselves accidentally but have heroic rumors around them, or senators who have seared-in memories of holidays spent in countries they were never in, or former vice presidents who claim to have been Action Man while in uniform who were actually do-nothing REMFs.

I don’t know if the database will extend to active duty personnel. Or if it will go back all the way to WWI or the banana wars of the 20s.

Agg said he hopes the new Web site gives potential poseurs some pause when considering the “extraordinarily distasteful” act of faking a military background.

“It really puts them on notice that major veteran groups are aware of this problem and are doing something about it,” he said. “It’s an issue of great interest, not just to the military community, but to the public at large.”

But I do like the grassroots flavor of this: doing the fact checking the media won’t do.

Darn shame it won’t be able to do anything about things like this ...

Right now it appears that only the major awards are covered, which makes sense; this is a valor awards database, not a service records highlights database. So you can’t pull up grandpa Joe to check that he really did get a Good Conduct ribbon, or that he qualified Expert on the pistol range. And I don’t think MilitaryTimes is part of the government. So it may not be officially official. That kind of database would be huge, considering the millions of men and women who have spent time in uniform over the years. I’m sure the Pentagon has such a database, and I’m sure a channel exists for employers etc to query it. This isn’t that. This is just a fast check site.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/04/2009 at 12:28 PM   
Filed Under: • Military •  
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