Dr. Z, is that you?
I am one of those people who are totally for legislation criminalizing deception in the form of pretending to be a war hero, as long as it is specific and not too broad. It should not get out of hand where one can not where a military uniform as part of a halloween outfit. However, when someone walks around stating they are a medal of honor recepient and they are not, they deserve to be held accountable.
For those who take advantage of health care and the like, they can be punished under other laws targeting fraud, misuse of government funds, etc. However, medals and awards that bring other benefits and memberships should be kept under some form of government scrutiny, as these are awards ‘handed out’ by the government. Why not regulate usage and misuse?
I was in Fight Club.
Wanna hear about it?
?! The official Navy ‘ceremonial’ music is Eternal Father
Everybody comes out of boot knowing it. It is played for many different occasions. I have heard it at innumerable navy funcrions I got suckered into going to with my husband.
It actually is illegal to wear a MOH, real or fake, that you haven’t earned or to manufacture fake Medals of Honor.
Wait. The Navy has an official march? Does that really come up all that often?
When was the last time the Navy marched off to war? 
In bootcamp and A school we marched around the base quite a bit. In bootcamp, we actually marched to Anchor’s Away for reviews, graduation and just for the sadisitic hell of it a few times.
I am drawing a complete blank on Eternal Father. I just played the Wav file* and it is actually is worse than Anchor’s Away. Wow.
Jim
- How appropriate for the Navy, a *Wave * file.
I do this sometimes. I understand the sentiment behind it, but I can never remember which of the two (former or ex-) I’m not.
Think of ex as being divorced, and you are never divorced from the Corps. You just used to belong, hence the former.
Well, as a lawyer and the world’s strongest millionaire, I say this guy is a disgrace to Walter Mitty’s everywhere
It’s actually a much bigger problem than a lot of folks realize. The initial impetus for the book “Stolen Valor” started innocently enough, insofar as such things go, when a newsbroadcast featured some whackjob claiming to be a Vietnam veteran and Green Beret, and piqued the interest of the genuine article. “That guy sounds like a clown.” So, he checked this guy out, and turns out our “hero” was a total fraud. The book is a very interesting read, and dispels many of the entrenched myths about the military in general, and Vietnam in particular. Highly recommended.
There was a big thing in the news in the mid-80’s about how 80-90% of the homeless men that you see on the street were Viet Nam vets. Someone finally did some digging and it turned out that a huge number of those were lying about their service. I expect to see a lot of fake Iraq/Afghanistan vets in the very near future.
I went on missions so secret that you can be shot just for reading this.
The horror! The horror!
But I don’t want to talk about it.
There are actually a couple of regular Great Debates posters that I have my eye on, as I am quite sure that within twenty years they will both be claiming to be Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans.
Time will tell.
I had a close friend, a really close friend from Utah who also lives in Japan, tell me one night about his secret life in the military. Back years ago, he had joined the army, only to have problems with his bad knees (too much basketball) and pneumonia in book camp, and he was allowed to quit.
Fast forward 17+ years, and he was dating a really young girl down in Fukuoka. I had gone down and visited them and we were staying at her place. After she had gone to sleep, we were talking and he told me the “real” story about him and the military. As he relates it (well, the short story, anyway):
When he was in basic training, he discovered he was a super shot. He just couldn’t miss the middle, and was out shooting the sergeants. So they put him in sniper school and he leans the trade.
He graduates, and they give him a “mission.” He is flown down to a military base in some friendly country in South America. For security reasons, he isn’t even told which country it is. They fly him and his other team member by helicopter to a further undisclosed location, where they hiked for a while to a small town. They got set in their place and at a time when intelligence reports had predicted, the “target” came out of the building. He had asked who the target was, but was told, again for security reasons, that this was a need to know basis and he didn’t need to know.
He said that he just couldn’t do it. The other person on the team took the shot and they got off out of there. They were airlifted and he returned to the States. He said that he told them he just couldn’t do it, and for some reason I can’t recall, rather than just dump him back into the general army, they let him quit.
He’s not a bad liar, but the whole time he’s telling me I keep wondering what the fuck he’s giving me this shit for.
So, I ask him why he didn’t tell us about this 17 years before. He said that he told this had to be kept secret and he was concerned about our safety, if word was out that he was telling people that the US government was secretly assassinating people then people who knew this would be in danger.
Then out came the only truth for the night. He explained that he had told his girlfriend about this, and she wondered why he hadn’t told his best friend about it. So, it suddenly dawns on me. He’s snowing me to back up a lie he’s told his girlfriend.
The next day, he tells her that he had told me about the story, I play along with it, but kept thinking why not come clean to me, just tell me he’s been caught and needs me to help him out. More importantly, the relationship was in trouble, and if he has to be inventing stories to keep her interested, it wasn’t (and didn’t) going to be working for much longer.
We were doing an investment together, and I started to worry if he was telling me the truth about it as well. Sure enough, I get enough indication that this is spun as well, so I bail. Fortunately, it only cost me a few hundred dollars and I get the $20,000 out that I had put in, but our friendship didn’t survive.
I was wooed by the Air Force, Army, and Navy (Marines) when I was 17-18. I had great ASVAB scores and Language skills and was being promised time at Monterey and an overseas post. The Marine recruiters were very good at what they did and were appealing to my sense of awe by stressing the Marine tradition and cachet, they just about had me wrapped. I was ready to start going to pre-bootcamp training and meetings with other recruits. Before I signed, my German teacher had a good talk with me and dissuaded me. She put me down the College route, and I think that was a good thing, but I guess I’ll never really know.
Now, on the other hand, I do suspect I was a Blind Mule for the CIA during the height of the coldwar. You’ve seen it a hundred times: the unwitting exchange student smuggling important microfilm to and from West German and East German Covert Operators totally ignorant that he is a pawn in the spygame.
That’s one of the fringe benefits of doing what I do. I don’t have to make shit up. 
I don’t have to make up any shit either. You don’t when you are the guy who came up with not only the ideas for Ebay but also youtube. Sketched the ideas both out on bar napkins but forgot to have the them sign the NDA. :smack:
My dad, a former Marine (Dutch Marine Corps… the inventors of the concept?) is now an ex-Marine in the only way he himself said he could become one. He’s dead. He used to have a good chuckle about that, in combination with Monty Pythons Parrot sketch.
“He dead!”
“No he isn’t!”
“Yes he is. He has ceased to be! He is an ex-Marine!”
“No he isn’t! He’s just pining for the Halls of Montezuma!”
I once broke off with and resumed dating the same woman. (Actually, now, an ex-former-ex or a double-ex).
If I used to mold concrete for a living, would that make me an ex-former?
Another thing there aren’t is ex-maroons. Once a maroon, always a maroon.