Ignoring John Kerry, who is to me the most blatant about trumping up his war record (Christmas in Cambodia?  Not!), there is a large list of people who have used the exaggeration of service, or whole cloth creation for that matter, to enhance their status, make money or attempt to achieve power.

The Rush comments have brought to light a sickening history of it, and some of them are a surprise to me.  Here is an interesting list:

• When Walter Williams, America’s last living Civil War veteran, died on December 19, 1959, the city of Houston gave him a funeral procession the likes of which the town had never before seen. A week of official mourning was declared, and more than 100,000 people lined the streets to salute the passing of the last link to a war that had torn America apart.

  There was just one problem. Williams had never served in the Civil War. He was a fraud, as writer William Marvel discovered when he began researching a story for Blue & Gray magazine a few years ago. Although Williams had passed himself off as a Confederate soldier for 27 years, records proved he had actually been just five years old when hostilities broke out — too young even to serve as a drummer boy.
  

• Amusingly, the man from whom Williams inherited the “Oldest Living Confederate” title, John Salling, was another phony. In fact, a dismayed Marvel wrote, “Every one of the last dozen recognized Confederates was bogus” — including all three attendees at the last United Confederate Veterans’ reunion, where, one imagines, they shared made-up stories of how they whipped the Yankees at Bull Run, witnessed the burning of Atlanta, and gave Scarlet O’Hara directions to Tara.
  
• For years, James Harris Reed entertained his nursing home pals with memories of his days as a flying ace, shooting down 13 German planes and battling the legendary Red Baron. Following his 1995 death, investigation revealed that Reed had been an 11-year-old school boy at the end of the Great War. (The Navy’s only WWI ace, with five kills, was Lt.(j.g.) David Ingalls.)
  
• Tom Mix claimed to have charged up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. In reality, Mix never saw combat — unless one counts the time his wife shot him. Military records list Mix as a deserter.
  
• Actor Brian Dennehy claimed for years that he served a five-year tour as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was wounded in action. In reality, Dennehy’s only Vietnam “action” was on-screen in “A Rumor of War”, in which he portrayed a Marine gunnery sergeant. While Dennehy did serve in the Marines, it was not in Vietnam; his only “combat duty” was playing football in Okinawa in 1962.
  

• In 1984, Robert Sorensen was a Connecticut state representative running for reelection. When challenged on his opposition to opening legislative sessions with the Pledge of Allegiance, Sorensen huffily replied: “My patriotism should not be questioned by anyone because . . . when my country called me into service, I fought in Vietnam.”

  Except that he didn’t, as his opponent quickly discovered. Even then, Sorensen brazened it out, employing an excuse that, for sheer audacity, can’t be beat. “For the first time ever, the American public had before them a war in their living rooms,” he explained. “Every single person in this United States fought in that war in Vietnam. We all felt the anguish that those people felt. So in a sense I was there.”

Even Bill Clinton, the king of rationalization and sophistry would have choked on that whopper. 

• The same year, Iowa Senator (and later presidential candidate) Tom Harkin boasted that he had flown F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions in Vietnam. No, wait, it was combat sorties over Cuba, he corrected himself when challenged by Senator Berry Goldwater. Harkin finally acknowledged that he had never seen combat — that his military experience consisted of ferrying damaged aircraft for repairs from Japan to the Philippines.
  
• Senate candidate and Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke also ran on his Vietnam “war record,” claiming he’d participated in rice drops behind enemy lines for the CIA. Real Vietnam veterans exposed him. Duke’s only military “service,” it turned out, consisted of brief membership in the ROTC at Louisiana State University, where authorities kicked him out when Duke began airing his nutty beliefs.
  
• Academics have also been caught fabricating feats of military prowess. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis apologized (sort of) for his imaginary service in Vietnam, where he claimed to have been the commander of a platoon of combat paratroopers from the famed 101st Airborne and a member of General William Westmoreland’s staff.
  
• In 1990, Major Gary Probst, a popular chaplain with the 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington, claimed he’d served in Vietnam as a Green Beret and an Army Ranger. A chest full of medals, including the Special Forced Badge, the Vietnam Campaign Ribbon, and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal, backed up Probst’s claims. When it was discovered that his entire résumé was a fantasy, Probst claimed he’d lied for the Lord: His phony heroics, he explained, allowed him to gain the trust of his flock — which made his fibs a good and helpful thing. His superiors disagreed. Probst was court-martialed and dishonorably discharged.
  

• A few years ago Californian William Gehris became known as America’s most decorated war hero after telling the San Bernardino Sun that he’d been awarded 54 decorations for his heroics as an Army sergeant, including the Distinguished Service Cross, six Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, a Legion of Merit, a Soldier’s Medal, and the Distinguished Service Medal. Gehris claimed he’d fought with Patton at the Battle of the Bulge and was among the first wave of warriors to land on Utah Beach on D-Day. Impressed by his advocacy on behalf of veterans, then-U.S. Congressman Bob Dornan appointed Gehris to a veterans’ advisory committee.

  Big mistake. When a suspicious B.G. Burkett obtained Gehris’ military record through a Freedom of Information Act request, he discovered that Gehris had indeed served in the Army, but had received a single Bronze Star — one that “had been awarded to all Army infantrymen for meritorious service; the others were service awards given to the typical soldier in the thick of the European campaign,” Burkett notes in “Stolen Valor.” When a reporter, armed with Burkett’s evidence, exposed Gehris, the vet refused to acknowledge his lies. “There are people who don’t believe 6 million Jews were killed, either,” he said.
  

• Dan Rather. In “Bias,” the book about CBS by former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg, the author describes telling Rather about a soon-to-be published article citing a CBS News report as a particularly onerous example of left-wing bias. To Goldberg’s amazement, “Rather’s voice started quivering, and he told me how in his young days, he had signed up with the Marines — not once, but twice!”

  Again, Burkett comes to the rescue with the truth. Rather signed up with the Marines only once, and “never got through Marine recruit training because he couldn’t do the physical activity,” Burkett says. And he notes that Rather was “discharged less than four months later on May 11, 1954 for being medically unfit.” And yet, Rather has been known to brag about his “career” in the Marines.

  Even worse, the network anchor who ferociously attacked both Vice President Dan Quayle and President George W. Bush for avoiding Vietnam service himself took steps to avoid service in the Korean War. While a student at Sam Houston University in the early 1950s, Rather joined the Army Reserve, “thus avoiding the possibility of being drafted,” Burkett notes. By the time Rather graduated, the Korean War was history.
  

• Sgt. Andrew Isbell was seemingly among the most heroic of the returning soldiers from the war in Iraq. When he appeared at his drug-possession trial in Rockport, Texas in August of 2004, neatly clad in his Army uniform, he told jurors that he had recently earned two Bronze Stars in Iraq, plus a Purple Heart for the bullet wound in his shoulder. Jurors were sympathetic to the fact that Isbell, an infantryman, was on medical leave from his dangerous job patrolling the streets of Baghdad, and acquitted him.

  Subsequent investigation proved that Isbell had seen no combat, suffered no wounds, and earned no decorations. He wasn’t even a sergeant. He had instead worked in food service as a private, and had been discharged from the Army after being AWOL for two months. For his lies in court, Isbell was charged with aggravated perjury.
  

• Sgt. Thomas Larez was another seemingly heroic vet. He’d suffered multiple gunshot and shrapnel wounds when he pulled an injured soldier to safety while under fire from the Taliban in Afghanistan. Despite his wounds and temporary blindness caused by a concussion grenade, Larez rallied, killed seven Taliban fighters, and captured a gaggle of others. A Dallas television station celebrated Laraz’s exploits, only to sheepishly run a retraction when it turned out that, while Larez was indeed a Marine, he had never set foot in Afghanistan.
  

• Former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey served with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, in Iraq for nearly a year during 2003. During that time, he claims, he and other Marines (whom he labeled “psychopathic killers”) deliberately gunned down innocent Iraqi civilians, fired on peaceful protesters, and shot a 4-year-old child through the head at a checkpoint. Or was it a 6-year-old?

  “How is a 6-year-old child with a bullet in his head a terrorist, because that is the youngest I killed,” Massey told an audience at Cornell University. Or was it a girl? “That’s war: a 6-year old girl with a bullet hole in her head at an American checkpoint,” he told a Vermont audience.

  Except, as Massey later acknowledged to the Post-Dispatch, he’d never actually shot any child, boy or girl. “I meant, that’s what my unit did,” he explained. Except that it didn’t, according to Massey’s fellow Marines and the journalists who covered them. Nor did they target civilians and protestors. In fact, as the Post-Dispatch documents, each one of Massey’s claims is “either demonstrably false or exaggerated — according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit.”

Is there a motive for this?  Yep:

Nevertheless, Massey’s lies have earned him the usual rewards of the anti-

war Left: A book deal, invitations to speak at elite colleges, and a place of honor with Cindy Sheehan’s traveling circus. Confronted by the Post-Dispatch with the complete lack of corroboration for his atrocity tales, Massey merely shrugs. “Admitting guilt is a hard thing to do,” he says.

It sure is.

• Those who encounter these phony heroes will likely go home with a good story. But nothing they hear will top the true story of the man who wandered into a chapter of the American Legion in Washington state a few years ago wanting to become a member. Like many stories of military frauds, this one comes by way of champion hoax-exposer B. G. Burkett.

  The applicant — who was Asian American — filled out aprotesters form indicating he was a veteran of the Vietnam War, and had been honorably discharged. He became a valued member of the chapter, eventually winning office as the chapter commander.

  There was just one hitch. This man was a Vietnam veteran, all right. But he’d neglected to mention that he’d fought for North Vietnam. Once this shocking fact was revealed — despite his popularity with his fellow vets — the soldier’s membership was gone with the wind.
  

 Via Michelle Malkin, and Gateway Pundit, don’t forget Josh Landsdale:

Josh’s “battle injuries

By his own admission, Josh Lansdale left Iraq because of a ‘busted’ ankle and post-traumatic stress syndrome. Josh enlightened all Missourians with this message during his starring appearance in Claire McCaskill’s misguided propaganda peace. This description might leave many voters with a mental image of Josh falling in a hail of gunfire and heroically leaving the battlefield with a shattered ankle. Interestingly enough, though, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

According to several sources, the Source has learned the true nature behind Jumpin’ Josh’s injury. Rather than in a glorified firefight, Josh actually ‘busted’ his ankle in an intense volleyball match, believe it or not.

For those who may be lost, Josh, or Joshua Darren Lansdale, has made waves recently for his appearance in a McCaskillcouldn’tJumping propaganda advertisement. In the ad Josh claimed that he had tried to gain admission to a veterans hospital for 6 months following his return from Iraq, yet was denied. Yes, of course, this was Senator Talent’s fault somehow. Last week, the Talent campaign simply requested documentation of Josh’s alleged attempts, and Josh refused.

Add to the list the recanting of Scott Thomas Beauchamp and the conviction of Jesse MacBeth and you see a part of the whole phenomenon that is being used just as Kerry did in Vietnam with his Winter Soldier farce.

Find people who make outrageous claims and parade them as proof the war is evil and we must end it, regardless of any of the merits of the war.

The stories make great fodder for a media desperate to stir our passions against the war, and often they are left unchecked and unverified.  And often no one cares about the real victim: the troops serving lawfully and honorably who are slandered by these fakers.

Michelle Malkin unlocks the mysteries of the Winter Soldier Syndrome:

The tale of Army Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the discredited “Baghdad Diarist” for the discredited New Republic magazine, is an old tale:

Self-aggrandizing soldier recounts war atrocities. Media outlets disseminate soldier’s tales uncritically. Military folks smell a rat and poke holes in tales too good (or rather, bad) to be true. Soldier’s ideological sponsors blame the messengers for exposing anti-war fraud.

Beauchamp belongs in the same ward as John F. Kerry, the original infectious agent of the toxic American disease known as Winter Soldier Syndrome. The ward is filling up.

U.S. military investigators concluded this week that Beauchamp concocted allegations of troop misconduct in a series of essays for The New Republic. “The investigation is complete and the allegations from PVT Beauchamp are false,” Major Steven Lamb, a spokesman for Multi National Division-Baghdad, told USA Today. The New Republic is standing by Beauchamp’s work. But Michael Goldfarb, online editor and blogger at The Weekly Standard who first challenged Beauchamp’s writing, reported Monday that Beauchamp had “signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods — fabrications containing only ‘a smidgen of truth,’ in the words of our source.”

To illustrate the soul-deadening impact of war, Beauchamp had described sitting in a mess hall in Iraq mocking a female civilian contractor whose face had “melted” after an IED explosion. “I love chicks that have been intimate — with IEDs,” Pvt. Beauchamp claimed he said out loud in her earshot. “It really turns me on — melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses.” Beauchamp recounted vividly: “My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall.”

It wasn’t true. After active-duty troops, veterans, embedded journalists and bloggers raised pointed questions about the veracity of the anecdote, Beauchamp confessed to The New Republic’s meticulous fact-checkers that the mocking had taken place in Kuwait — before he had set foot in Iraq to experience the soul-deadening impact of war.

Military officials in Kuwait tried to verify the incident and called it an “urban legend or myth.” Beauchamp’s essays are filled with similarly spun tales. How much of a bull-slinger was Beauchamp, an aspiring creative writer who crowed on his personal blog that he would “return to America an author” after serving (which he told friends and family would “add a legitimacy to EVERYTHING I do afterwards”)? The very first line of his essay “Shock Troops,” which opened with the melted-face mockery, was this: “I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.”

“Nearly every time.” At “my base in Iraq.” Complete and utter bull.

Defenders of The New Republic, a left-leaning magazine infamously duped by another young and ambitious fabulist, Stephen Glass, say the Beauchamp saga has been 1) blown out of proportion; 2) perpetuated by sloppy, rumor-mongering bloggers; 3) used as a distraction from the troubles in Iraq; and 4) exploited by “chickenhawks” who deny that war atrocities happen.

But the truth is, you won’t find a single Bush Kool-Aid drinker among the military bloggers, embedded independent journalists and active-duty troops who prominently questioned the Beauchamp sham. They know it ain’t all going swimmingly overseas. But unlike Pvt. Beauchamp, they’re committed to telling the whole truth about the war, not just approximations and embellishments that will score easy magazine gigs and future book deals with elite New York City publishers. The doubters of Scott Thomas know atrocities when they see them. But, unlike the TNR editors, they know steaming bull dung when they smell it.

Ever since John Kerry sat in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and accused American soldiers of wantonly razing villages “in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan,” the Left has embraced a small cadre of self-loathing soldiers and soldier wannabes willing to sell their deadened souls for the anti-war cause. Think Jimmy Massey, the unhinged Marine who falsely accused his unit of engaging in mass genocide against Iraqis. Think Jesse MacBeth and Micah Wright, anti-war Army Rangers who weren’t Army Rangers.

Winter Soldier Syndrome will only be cured when the costs of slandering the troops outweigh the benefits. Exposing Scott Thomas Beauchamp and his brethren matters because the truth matters. The honor of the military matters. The credibility of the media matters. Think it doesn’t make a difference? Imagine where Sen. John Kerry would be now if the Internet had been around in 1971.

Regardless of any justifications or rationalizations, the simple fact is that Truth Matters.

And rather then slow down and deal with it, the left prefers to let the problem fester knowing that even debunked the damage is done.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Big Dog’s Weblog, The Populist, Shadowscope, Stuck On Stupid, The Amboy Times, Adeline and Hazel, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Wake Up America, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, guerrilla radio, DeMediacratic Nation, Adam’s Blog, Jeanette’s Celebrity Corner, Inside the Northwest Territory, Webloggin, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, Faultline USA, Allie is Wired, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Walls of the City, Republican National Convention Blog, High Desert Wanderer, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.