MacBeth: For One Who Cries Out Loud

In the previous post regarding “Army Ranger/Special Forces” Jessie MacBeth, Casey submits this, as if it matters:

Oh, for crying out loud! When will people learn how to read!? I'm tired of entering the same blasted comment on every excitable blog on the planet.

If you to back and read the original post from JustCitizens, you'll notice that the Army rep say ONLY that MacBeth has no record of having served in the Rangers or Special Forces. What he did NOT say is that MacBeth had no record of service of any kind.

Who here does not understand this? I'm not saying this proves MacB was in the service; I'm just saying too many people are distorting the facts as stated.

Casey, you are correct in your discernment that I did not read the Just Citizens post closely enough to discover that the Army representative who responded did not disclose whether one Jessie MacBeth served in the Army in any capacity. I thank you for pointing out my error via your most-polite correction.

Does Mr. MacBeth have a military record that is less impressive than the one he made up? Maybe, and that’s no sin. I have a less-than impressive service record as well. Though I did achieve many things in my career as a USAF/USAFR member, I did not reach the rank which I should have from the length of my service (some due to supervisor inaction; some to personal failings). As a matter of fact, I bailed out because I wasn’t willing to do what I had to do to get promoted. I had done my time--from the age of nineteen--and wanted to see what this other world was like.

Did Jessie MacBeth have these same inklings? Maybe. Maybe he didn’t like his Army service as a cook (handy people), as an admin troop (very handy people), as a logistics sort (even more handy people) or as an infantryman (the ultimate in handy people).*

Maybe he did his Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine/Coast Guard tour in one of these fields or another uncelebrated field and separated with a great deal of disillusionment. Maybe he wanted to change the past.

Well, Jessie can join the flockin' club. However, he needs to be reminded that his wishes to change the life before only make his future even worse—especially in the information age. His parents changed his name when he was too young to have a say. Perhaps they were trying to hide something for some unknown reason and Jessie is only carrying on in the manner of his upbringing. But check this out: Jessie is an adult and his sins are now his own. It’s up to him to make a break with that heritage and stand on his own two feet and be up-front about his wrong-doings and carry on from there. And Jessie needs no one like Casey to hinder his entrance into the adult world of lessening his resposiblity for his shortcomings--better yet, Jessie's sins.

By the way, Casey, there’s still no proof that young Mr. MacBeth ever served in the United States Army; just so we know that you’re reading correctly. Anyone can look at a photo of an Army Ranger, walk into an Army Surplus store, make purchases and still be straight-up ignorant of how important detail is to all military members—which is a manifest and undeniable symptom of never having been in any US military service. Just sayin’.

*The reason that I mention these military career fields is due the fact that those who occupy them are considered low on the totem poll. But here’s something that many of us other service members often forget: without a great deal of smart, creative, competent and dedicated folks in these areas, the Greatest Military in the World would have fallen by the wayside long ago. True dat.

Supply folks, cooks, admin types and grunts: at least one of your comrades has made my service better via excellence in their professional capacities. So I know your invaluable worth and I salute you and what you do.

Comments

[Tully]

Macbeth has now been placed in Arizona, claiming to be an Iraq War veteran, as early as August 2003. That would have his "16 months of combat" in theater beginning in April 2002, eleven months before the invasion.

He claims to have been in Fallujah with the 3/75 Rangers. The 3/75 has not been to Fallujah, and in any case all the Fallujah action took place after Macbeth was certified as being in Arizona, making claims. When the major Fallujah offensive took place the 3/75 was in Afghanistan--and Jesse was in court for felony fraud.

I could go on and on and on, as the blogswarm has unearthed much on this poser. The more thoughtful and honest portion of the anti-war crowd has turned their back on him, to their credit. The mindless nutburger moonbats are still defending him, with lines from "total truth" to "fake but accurate" to totally incomprehensible angst.

[Justin]

I don't think any serious person on the antiwar left has really defended this guy.

[Bane]

Infantry? LOW on the totem pole? Bad word at you! We are the QUEEN of Battle! Follow us!

The whole rest of the military (ALL branches) exist to SERVE us, and you'd better not forget it.

[Constantine]

Hey J,

Your service record is commendable and I think just fine.

You have me beat by 1 year though. I went through basic in 1982.

The only diff is that I am still in the NG. ;)

So I took a few years off?

[Tully]

I don't think any serious person on the antiwar left has really defended this guy.

Define "serious person on the antiwar left." :-)

Macbeth ran the rally/lecture circuit with the organzed anti-war left for months. It wasn't until his video brought him exposure outside of the True Believer circles that he got caught, blatantly false as he is. And no one was questioning his lies among what I called "the more serious and thoughtful" crowd until he was already outed as a phony.

[LFCF]

Bravado aside, Bane is right, Juliette. Being Air Force, you may not know that in the Army, if you want a star, you Have to have a Combat Infantryman’s Badge. As the old Army saying goes, Nobody ever won a war without Boots on the Ground. You can loose them without the other stuff (such as A-10’s, the only thing the Air Force ever did right!). Even as a lowly Intel weenie in the bad old 70’s it was obvious who was at the top end of the food chain. Grunts being on the low end of the Totem Pole is a figment of Hollywood.
And as for that ‘Army of One’ ad…. Well, the Bilious b*****d who wrote that knows as much about real battle as he does about…well, Google the quote.

[baldilocks]

LFCF,

I don't think that you're getting my point. You may need that service to ease promotion, but while you're filling the square, others are noting the fact the you are "a dime a dozen"--not to me, but to others in your branch of service.

By the way, I served check-and-jowl with the Berlin Brigade during my two tours in that city.

[Iron Mike]

Friendly retort to our comrade LFCF: What boots on the ground during Kosovo? You don't mean those three soldiers that got lost, do you?! ;)

[Casey]

Jules, yes, I was snarky. I am very sorry about the tone. I apologize.

I put up a post regarding the reasoning behind the original comment here to avoid clogging up your comments with a long post.

[Bane]

Ugh, go wash your mouth out for even mentioning Clinton's little BJ distraction.

[LFCF]

This is to you, and not for posting. Sorry, Julitte, meant no disrespect. My grins disappeared from the post. I also did not know you were attached to Army units. Not that I am down on the Air Force. My father was an Air Force 'Lifer'MSgt, died in service two weeks before I was born.
That was back in the 'Bad Old 50's', when every family on Base had six to eight kids, and there was a funeral at least once a week from crashes in Jets named after the sound they made when they hit the ground. (Thud's). And when you kissed Daddy good-bye every two weeks for his duty on Alert. And could not sleep that night wondering if you would see him again. And it was not just the Pilots. At least the Pilots got Ejection Seats (see B-47). Remember the Bar B-Q scene in 'The Right Stuff'. Just before she died, I watched it with my Mom. I'd never heard her cry before.
Don't know why I got off the subject there. Anyway, the origional post was meant as a humorous aside to the footnote.

[baldilocks]

No offense taken originally, LFCF. BTW, that guy Iron Mike tweaking you up-thread served (in the AF) with me in Berlin. He's an officer now, but don't hold that against him. :-)

[Casey]

Hey, Jules, we may be both (partly) right. Appparently MacFake posted an alleged DD-214 on a personal webspace site. Uncle Jim put it up at Blackfive.

You are very much my master in this discipline, but apparently he mustered out at Fort Benning, has "0000 00 00" for his RESERVE OBLIG. TERM DATE (what, they're letting an SF Ranger go that easy!?), went straight from Basic to Ranger (6 months 11 bravo to 2 years 3 Ranger qualifyed [sic]), and his last duty assignment was (I'm depending on others' interpretation of the acronyms here) a training battalion.

Also note that the comments in PRIMARY SPECIALTY and DECORATIONS (etc.) are in a font resembling Times New Roman (occasionally capitalized lower-case), while the other filled-in elements are in all caps Courier.

I repeat: I'm going with others' intperpretations of this, read from comments (B5, LGF, others), but it looks like MacFake washed out of Basic!!

Oh, the irony is just too rich, isn't it?

[babylonandon]

Juliette, I was reading your comments about support personnel and it gave me a laugh about how different the services are.

In the fleet they are generally the high people on the totum pole of society. They provide the food, wash your clothes, get you your pay, get you water, electricity, air-conditioning, and given the fact that they control these things and the influence this gives them with the officers in charge, they rule.

Us weapons systems people were considered nothing but a bunch of useless passengers (and were often viewed as unwelcome ones).

We had to often figure out ways of washing our own clothes (if we actually wanted them to be clean), most of us had huge hassles with problems with our personel records (certain clerks took unholy glee at messing our stuff up as they knew we could do nothing about it when they did), and we were the first ones to get our showers shut off when water was short.

This last was really annoying. After spending a day hauling around, tearing down (while bathing in the grease and solvents used to maintain) a 20mm gatling gun, finding that you had to take birdbath with a washcloth in a sink was a real bummer.

In the fleet, you would say we were considered the least handy people.

[Mescalero]

Baldilocks--

Sweetheart--you're right on. The only information that matters is that weenie MacBeth never served in the Rangers.

[DagneyT]

Never again will imposters be able to perpetrate the same indignities and dishonor on our heroes in uniform, so long as there is the internet to thwart their insidious efforts!

Now all we have to do is stop Shrillary Rob'em Clinton's efforts to curb freedom on the internet!