Saturday, August 26, 2023

Iraq, Ron DeSantis' stolen valor

Starting with a documentary available on YOUTUBE.


Here's the description from YOUTUBE:

This powerful investigation into Shia clerics in some of Iraq's holiest shrines uncovers a network of exploitation of young women and girls, trapped into prostitution and pimped out by a religious elite. For the first time the clerics' secret sex trade has been captured on camera. Undercover filming and victim testimony reveal how they procure young women for male clients, and are prepared to conduct ‘pleasure marriages’ with children.


16,436 views since it went up yesterday.  The title is IRAQ'S SECRET SEX TRADE.  It's from 2019 and was a BBC production.


Now let's turn to stolen valor.  In Thursday night's "Philomena Cunk is hilarious, Ron DeSanits is just sad," Mike noted DeSantis used the debate on Wednesday to mislead viewers into believing he was a Navy Seal.  Ronald was not a Navy Seal.  FACTCHECK.ORG notes:


During the Aug. 23 debate, DeSantis said: “I learned in the military, I was assigned with U.S. Navy SEALs in Iraq, that you focus on the mission above all else, you can’t get distracted. So Republicans, we’ve got to look forward and we’ve got to make sure that we’re bringing the message that can win in November of 2024.”

Later, when asked whether there should be some required military service for everyone in the U.S., DeSantis responded: “I think it should be voluntary. I’m somebody that volunteered to serve, inspired by Sept. 11 and I deployed to Iraq alongside U.S. Navy SEALs in places like Fallujah, Ramadi, and it’s something that I think has taught me. You know, when you go in that type of environment, anything you have, your personal agenda, you check it at the door. You go there and it’s about focusing on the mission above all else and guys come together and they get it done.”

DeSantis earned his law degree from Harvard and then served in the Navy as a lawyer, or a JAG (Judge Advocate General). His military personnel records, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and posted online by journalist James LaPorta, show that he served on active duty from September 2005 to February 2010, and he was stationed in Iraq with Seal Team 1 from 2007 to 2008.

The Miami Herald in 2018 reported on DeSantis’ time in Iraq, saying he “arrived in the fall of 2007 as part of ‘the surge’ of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops, whose mission was to quell insurgencies that turned cities like Fallujah into bloody battle zones.” DeSantis was “a senior legal adviser to the SEAL who commanded Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah, Navy Capt. Dane Thorleifson.”


He was not a Navy Seal, he was a Jag. 

Apparently, he now feels that being an attorney was too 'weak' so he feels the need to mislead people into thinking he was a Navy Seal.


From Justin Rohrlich's report for THE DAILY BEAST:


“He was never a Navy SEAL,” Billy Allmon, a former member of SEAL Team 1, told The Daily Beast. “It’s a misleading statement.”

[. . .]

DeSantis’ squishy descriptions of his “SEAL” service can be equally irritating for American vets who served in other branches of the service. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a onetime Air Force pilot who continues to serve as a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, said on Thursday that he has “had people tell me that DeSantis was a Navy SEAL.”

“It bothers me,” Kinzinger told The Daily Beast. “I deployed to support SEALs, Delta, etc, and never once have [I] tried to pretend I was one. And never once said I ‘deployed with the SEALs.’”

Reaction online to DeSantis’ SEAL story was swift, with radio host and former Navy pilot Kai Ryssdal tweeting, “I was on the Navy Staff at the Pentagon with a Navy SEAL. So I, too, am a Navy SEAL.”

“He was just a f**king Navy lawyer, never a SEAL,” former Navy officer Scott Mettler posted. “The SEALs were merely his clients.”



Some Twitter reaction to the lie. 










And let's note Paul Rudnick on Donald Trump's mugshot.





The following sites updated:



 

Posted by at