Posted on 02/23/2015 10:23:54 PM PST by CivilWarBrewing
Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald has admitted that he lied about serving in the military's special forces.
'Special Forces? What years? I was in special forces,' McDonald said when a homeless man told him he had served among the Army's elite troops.
The late January comments were caught on camera for a CBS piece about the continued large numbers of homeless veterans.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
He’s an arrogant SOB. A couple weeks ago at a Congressional hearing, he was asked by Representative Mike Coffman (R-CO and combat vet himself) cost overruns at the Denver VA. McDonald blame Congress for the overruns and basically said Coffman is not qualified to debate the issue. McDonald then said I’ve run a large company sir, what have you done. He’s a hot head.
Sounds good except for the fact that he’s a white Republican...
I’m sorry, I was specifically replying to post 6. I didn’t make that very clear, did I?! Well, whites can be criminals and Rs can be criminals, but it seems that the most definitely indicator of criminality is ...the person is a black Dem politician. Sad.
I agree with you, xzins. I was attached to the 82nd for REFORGER and other “special[extraordinary]” missions during the same timeframe 1975-1980 and after. Unqualified in all respects for airborne infantry, not even jump-qualified, and I can’t say I remember the secretary himself - it’s a big unit. I was medical. But I can say that 1) that Ranger tab was/is a big deal, and 2) the 82nd ABN performed missions during the cold war that were either “special ops” in character, or in close concert or supportive of Special Ops, They were right at the edge of Special Forces. This is, in my view, not stolen valor at all, since we don’t know, and perhaps will never know, what missions he performed, and anyone accusing him of that, who isn’t himself a vet of SOF/Rangers, can shut his piehole.
This guy was a soldier, he was an Airborne soldier, and he was Ranger qualified, and it’s not much of a slip of the tongue to say, “I was special forces” when that was normally what was the generalized term for specops way back then.
If he hadn’t done all the other stuff, then sure — call him a liar — but he had done all the other stuff AND he HAD gotten his spec ops qualification.
I’m not going to dump on McDonald other than to say he wasn’t specific enough, and it hurt him, and it was his fault for not being specific. I personally don’t consider having all the qualifications and identifying yourself in that vein as being a lie. Simply lacking in specificity.
Well, he didn’t admit he lied, but he certainly said he “misrepresented” himself....so I think we can consider it a lie. And Special Forces is Special Forces. And not is not.
It's a more difficult history than that statement:
The Rangers were deactivated following the Vietnam War in 1972. "The third period ended when the Ranger companies were inactivated as their parent units were withdrawn from the war between November 1969 (Company O, 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division), and 15 August 1972 (Company H, 1st Air Cavalry Division)."
This happened while McDonald was at West Point.
As you can see, these Rangers were considered organic to their Divisions, one of which was the 82nd Airborne.
Robert McDonald served on active duty from 1975 to 1980. During this time, the term Special Forces was used interchangeably with the term 'special operations forces' by those who were discussing the entire community.
McDonald complete Ranger school probably between 1976 and 1979.
The modern Ranger Regiment was activated in 1974 and FIRST saw combat in Grenada in 1980.
The 75th Ranger Regiment did not stand up until 1986.
The US Army Special Operations Command did not exist until 1990.
In my mind, McDonald, a West Point graduate who went contrary to his entire culture in going to West Point in about 1971, while Vietnam was still ongoing AND despite the anti-war sentiment of his high school years, 1967-1971, was not an anti-Vietnam protestor, but was instead a patriotic minded young man.
As a leader, he had no doubt associated the Rangers with their history which AT THAT TIME was as an organic unit to a division or as Long Range Patrols.
When they stood up again, there was no 'special operations command' for them to fall under. And while the SF was clearly the green beret, Special Forces, the language at the time of special operations forces was actually shorted to special forces in describing any special operator.
So, I still give McDonald a pass on this one. I'm convinced that if he'd said the same words in 1979 that no one would have blinked.
It is only in our day that we can complain about being 'specific' on this issue. Those specifics would not have been the way these distinctions were thought about when he was a patriotic young man actually going through these things.
If he lied once I have no problem. If repeatedly then get rid of him!
ping to #28
Every leftist is a liar. You see, they were those losers in elementary school so they have to spend their lives making crap up to look “important”.
Pitiful children even as adults.
They need someone to just slap the crap out of them.
Well, I’m not going to argue with a military man. or woman. But he himself did admit, say, he was “misrepresenting” i.e. “misremembering”
I also think he should get a pass on this one. He spouted off in an argument... And got out in front of his skis on it... But he did serve honorably and he corrected himself. While he wasn’t attached to a SF unit he did at least graduate Ranger school. It’s not as wrong as it might have been. It’s just not that big of a deal.
We should all count ourselves lucky that we don’t have people recording what we say every day and posting it on the Internet. I think he gets a mulligan on this one.
I appreciate your willingness to give McDonald a break.
His words were that he made a ‘misstatement’ and that he ‘incorrectly stated’.
Both of those are true. If you asked me if I was in spec ops, I would say that I was. Technically, that would be true, but it would give the impression that I went through some qualification course which I did not do. I was a chaplain assigned to a special operations unit while it was in the early part of its history. Many of our special branch officers and enlisted had not gone through any qualification course at that time.
If a person doesn’t understand the times, then he/she can’t understand the answers.
McDonald became Ranger qualified while serving in the 82nd not many years after the 82nd had had its own internal Ranger unit and during a time when such troops were generically referred to as special operations forces, and that was generically shorted to special forces even though everyone knew that there is a unique set of units know as Special Forces (green beret).
One of the reasons special operations forces were taken away from generic commands was because they were misused and their casualties rate was high, wasting training and opportunities. That caused the creation of the Special Operations Command under its own 4 star, Gen Lindsay, a man I got to brief after Just Cause, and who gave me a hard time. LOL. (And he was right about work-arounds and area coverages, although a particular unit eventually got its own internal chaplain, which was my recommendation.)
Absolutely perfect way of viewing this. Thanks, Ramius.
I believe your entire post is most insightful, my FRiend and especially the above excerpt.
We need to be careful about too-quickly tossing folks under the bus for small screw-ups. Really... The guy got in an argument with some rabid mouthy buttmunch and spouted off something that, while defensible in the moment, wasn’t technically accurate. Look, people... He went to West Point. He graduated Ranger school. He served (as far we know) honorably. I don’t know either how somebody with that pedigree ends up an appointee in an abhorrent administration. But I’m willing to cut the guy a break on this one.
Jaz, I’m certain that after they finished that Ranger school back in the 78-79 timeframe that they pumped those guys full of so much congratulation and adulation that the individuals came to believe the press clippings. I’m sure their efficiency reports glowed over the accomplishment, and I’m certain that they were told after succeeding at the school, “You’re one of us! Welcome to the lineage that goes all the way back to Rogers’ Rangers.”
He was the CEO of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s major corporations, he had a military background, he loved the military and wanted to help veterans, and he volunteered himself.
P&G being a Cincinnati based corporation, and being a Cincinnati resident myself once upon a time, and knowing the affiliation of most in that era, I’m betting he’s voted republican far more than he’s voted democrat.
I absolutely agree and concur with what you said.
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