Whistling Dixie
How actors, journalists, musicians, ministers, politicians, professors, and ordinary Joes pass themselves off as America's heroes.
by Anne Morse, The Weekly Standard EFL; RTWT.
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. . . .
The article goes on to list a number of examples of phony vets, including a few that might surprise you . . .
Many frauds claim veteran status in order to boost their careers. Phonies abound in Hollywood, on Wall Street, in politics, in academia, and in journalism. For instance, silent screen star 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. . . .
Then there are the political "veterans" whose war records are even more dubious than their campaign promises. 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."
Veterans who actually were in Vietnam being shot at with real bullets, might be forgiven for thinking that, in a sense, Sorensen was a horse's ass. (Sorenson withdrew from the race.) . . .
Senate candidate Cindy Sheehan supporter, Iraq war opponent, Arab News op-ed columnist, 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. (When Ellis returned home from his make-believe trip to Vietnam, he went on to perform imaginary civil rights work in Mississippi.) . . .
And then there's the really evil ones . . .
A few days ago the St. Louis Post-Dispatch exposed a different kind of fake: One who's making the kind of atrocity claims that got John Kerry noticed 34 years ago.
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."
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. . . .
Actually, it's usually not hard to tell the real heroes from the posers. The real heroes are usually the guys who don't brag about being heroes. 
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