jesse macbeth

In what they consider a "gotcha" moment, liberal activists led by John Kerry, have denounced Rush Limbaugh's September 27th use of the term "phony soldiers"….

Limbaugh: pro-withdrawal troops are 'phony soldiers.'

On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh declared that soldiers who support American withdrawal from Iraq are "phony soldiers." While discussing and disparaging war critics, a caller to Limbaugh's show, who claimed to be an active-duty soldier, said that anti-war activists "never talk to real soldiers" to support their position, to which Limbaugh responded "phony soldiers":

CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, starved for attention, called Limbaugh an "embarrassment to his party". Considering some of his past comments and actions, that was a perilous place for Kerry to go.

Think Progress even included an audio clip of the "offending" segment. But it's what they didn't post that needs to be introduced, not that Rush won't have fun with this controversy later today.

Almost immediately after the clip Think Progress posted, Rush said….

Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a "corporal." I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: "We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque."

Now, recently, Jesse Macbeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse Macbeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse Macbeth isn't an Army Ranger, never was. He isn't a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven't even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven't heard much about it. This doesn't fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don't look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse Macbeth's lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can't find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.

It's not what the left chooses to cite that can be controversial. What they intentionally omit can be much more instructional.
Jesse MacBeth was sentenced to five months in prison and three months in a half way house after he lied about being a veteran of the war in Iraq. MacBeth was featured on a widely-circulated anti-war video detailing his alleged time in Iraq, titled "Jesse MacBeth: An Iraq Veteran Speaks Out."

In the video, MacBeth claimed he was an Army ranger and continued to describe brutal killings he was ordered to commit. The 23-year-old claimed he killed more than 200 people, "They would actually feel the hot muzzle of my rife on their forehead," MacBeth reportedly said on the video.



In May 2005, MacBeth's lies were discovered and exposed to the public. On June 7 he pleaded guilty to making false statements to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He admitted to filing claims saying he had been in the army 3 years, awarded the Purple Heart, and ranked as a corporal.



However, MacBeth did have a small connection to the Army. He went trough 6 weeks
Jesse MacBeth never was an Army Ranger, much less a corporal, never received a Purple Heart for wounds inflicted by a foreign foe, and neither saw nor participated in war crimes with fellow U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, claims for which he became a poster boy for the anti-war movement.

So, there was likely no way the 23-year-old Tacoma man suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from the horrors of war and other injuries.

MacBeth was sentenced Friday to five months in jail and three years' probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and an Army discharge record.

At a sentencing hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik on Friday, MacBeth's federal public defender, Jay Stansell, said that if MacBeth didn't have PTSD from a war, he had mental health problems and grew up in a harsh environment, homeless on the streets, surviving by seizing whatever angle or positive feedback he could get.

"I know he lived a war as a child," Stansell said.

Lasnik, weighing a standard sentencing range of between two and eight months for falsifying a VA claim and an Army discharge record, also ordered MacBeth to seek help for mental health problems, especially as they related to committing domestic violence.

MacBeth's is the latest case to be sentenced under "Operation Stolen Valor," which uses the new Stolen Valor Act to go after people posing as veterans, who often festoon themselves with awards and invent tales of long-term injuries, often to fraudulently acquire veterans benefits.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Friedman said the sentence is often linked to how much money a fake veteran bilks from the government, and MacBeth was caught before he took any.

Friedman said the government doesn't fully understand what MacBeth's motivations were. His actions included an effort to document PTSD, Friedman said, "but they were also symptomatic of something else."

Under a plea agreement in May, MacBeth admitted guilt to falsifying a claim for veterans compensation benefits and altering his military discharge record, which was issued after he washed out of Army boot camp after 44 days in 2003.

A thin man who sat quietly looking down through most of the hearing, MacBeth apologized for snookering anti-war groups with his claims of killing unarmed, helpless civilians in Iraq -- which were translated into Arabic and posted on the Internet -- and also to U.S. soldiers whom he defamed.

MacBeth said he felt bad for what he did.

"I'm sorry not only for lying about everything and discrediting anti-war groups, but also for defaming the real heroes, the soldiers out there sacrificing for their country," MacBeth said. "I was trying to pull a fast one, to make money to get off the streets."

MacBeth fooled peace groups and alternative media to become something of an anti-war star over the past four years.

He claimed he witnessed and participated in war crimes in Iraq with other Rangers, slaughtering hundreds of unarmed men, women and children.

In a widely distributed Internet video translated into Arabic, Macbeth said. "We would burn their bodies ... hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque."

Lasnik noted that the case operated in two arenas, one in the courtroom where he was sentenced specifically for the crime of falsifying records, and another "in the blogosphere and elsewhere where he became a symbol."

"Too many people with a political agenda grabbed ahold of Mr. MacBeth's story and ran with it because they wanted to believe it. Any sober look should have lead people to believe it was all a made-up rant," Lasnik said.

"They tried to make him a poster boy for their point of view, and I think that is outrageous," Lasnik said.

Yet, while MacBeth's actions embarrassed the anti-war movement, it cannot be argued, as other quarters of the blogosphere assert, "that all reports of abuse by Americans in Iraq are incorrect," Lasnik cautioned. The military justice system has brought to light and dealt with such reports, he said.

Operation Stolen Valor is a year-old federal law enforcement effort that has resulted in a dozen cases under investigation in the Pacific Northwest, with fraud totals of more than $1.4 million. Eight cases have been filed and are in various stages of prosecution.

The act allows authorities to pursue phonies they previously could not touch. In the past, authorities rarely could act unless they caught someone wearing an award.

"As a Vietnam veteran and the father of a decorated Army officer currently serving, I feel very keenly the damage done by Jesse Macbeth and these other fakes," U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said.