Anti-war video bogus? (bumped)
posted at 8:44 am on May 22, 2006 by Allahpundit
***Update: New post on Macbeth is here.***
I can’t get this to load, but I’m putting the link out there anyway because someone sent me a long message this morning questioning its veracity. Not just the claims that are made, either; I’m talking about mistakes in his uniform, etc.
I know we have readers who are in the military and I’d like some feedback. What do you guys think? I’ll forward the e-mail I received to Lt. Smash, Mudville Gazette, and BlackFive and see if I can get their opinions. Stay tuned.
Update: Suddenly the site is down. Hmmm.
Update: Good thing someone put it on YouTube, eh?
Update: Just received e-mails from Blackfive and Uncle Jimbo. B5: “The photo on the wall of this ‘ranger’ is completely laughable.” Uncle J: “The pic on his wall fronts him all the way out. Wrong t-shirt, wrong sleeve roll, wrong flash on beret.”
Uncle J is vlogging, by the way. Check out his latest at YouTube.
Update: Here’s Uncle Jimbo’s post at Blackfive. Hot Air’s own Bryan Preston is an Air Force vet and he thinks Macbeth is a faker, too. See his comment in this thread.
Here’s a story from Arizona State’s student newspaper dated April 12, 2004 in which MacBeth (his first name is spelled “Jesse” here, not “Jessie”) is described as an Army vet recently returned from Iraq. I still haven’t watched the video all the way through yet, but the person who e-mailed me this morning says the narrator describes Macbeth as having been in Iraq for 16 months. How, if he was already back in the U.S. thirteen months after the war began?
Update: Blackfive has a screencap and commentary. LGF is following it too. Readers are chiming in below.
Update: Greyhawk e-mails to say that MilBlogs is now covering the story. They’ve got a list of discrepancies in the uniform; go check it out. Meanwhile, a reader points me to this interview with Macbeth (from a socialist outfit, of course) and poses a few questions:
1. Macbeth says he was “picked” to go to Ranger school. Is this possible, or is Ranger school all-volunteer?
2. Macbeth claims to have received so many medals that he can’t remember them all, including “five or six … just for landing.” Is this possible?
3. He got stabbed “many times”?
Update: Jeff Goldstein is following it too.
Update: Greyhawk has his own post up now: “[T]he key point is that Ranger or not, MacBeth is a liar.”
Update: Lt. Smash minces no words: “JESSIE MACBETH is a fraud. An imposter. A poseur, and not even a very convincing one.”
Update: Go read the comments to Uncle Jimbo’s post.
Update: A thread’s been started at a Rangers bulletin board. Keep your eye on it.
UPDATE (Bryan): There’s also some doubt on this guy’s Ranger unit. He claims to have been in the 3rd Ranger Battalion in that interview with SocialistAlternative. Jason Whong doubts Macbeth managed to land himself in the right unit:
Now here’s the nugget – the 3rd Ranger battalion eventually became the 3d Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment – in 1986… but it doesn’t appear they went to Iraq at all. (I could be very wrong on this one – but everything I read about the unit talks about the invasion of Panama… nothing much about OIF. But I have not had the time to investigate this further.
There is a real 3rd Ranger Battalion extant. It’s a video game community playing America’s Army–the very well done Army recruiting game. This “3rd Ranger Battalion’s” site has some NSFW graphics, hence no link–Google it if you want to find it. Perhaps that was Mr. Macbeth’s real unit. I’m sure the game has an Iraq-related level or two, or at least a mod.
Update: Some Googling reveals that the 3rd Ranger Battalion has indeed been to Iraq. So they got that detail right, at least.
Misha weighs in and points to this follow-up post by Lt. Smash, who says it might be time to start checking out other members of Iraq Vets Against the War.
Update: After you read Smash’s post, read this one. Geez.
Update: MilBlogs is all over this. Just keep scrolling (upward) when you click that last link. Better yet, start with Greyhawk‘s original post and scroll upward from there.
Update (Bryan): We hear from a current soldier who was in a unit that relieved the 3/75 Rgr BN in Iraq:
First, I commanded a rifle company in the 101st, one of the ones who relieved the 3/75 Rgr Bn at the dam in Hadithah. They do NOT spend 16 continuous months in theater. They were in Iraq for a three month stretch, then went back to Benning to re-fit and re-train, then back into theater for another four months.
Next, I also completed Ranger School(class 4-96) and you don’t get “picked” to do it. You must volunteer and then pass through a screening process(usually a pre-Ranger course of some kind – almost every division has such a course). After that, you go through the course and can wear the tab.
If you are part of the 75th Rgr Rgt, you are almost always promoted to E5 once you complete Ranger School, which he has not been.
The uniform discrepancies have been well documented: beret folded left(we fold them right), wrong flash for the 75th, sleeves folded wrong(inside showing – that’s the Marines), wrong color t-shirt(although I guess it could have just been the lighting), etc.
As a current soldier, I can state unequivocally this guy is an absolute fraud. The Geneva Convention was SO strictly enforced we felt it hampered us at times. IVAW should at least research this garbage before coming out with it.
No one’s made the connection yet, so I will: Jessie or Jesse MacBeth or Macbeth is doing exactly what John Kerry did during Vietnam. He is smearing the troops currently in action against the enemy as war criminals. As I predicted would happen, more than two years ago.
Update: The same officer who sent that last message sends an update:
Another note – I just showed this to two SF NCOs who work in the next room. The flash he is wearing, according to them, is a 1st SF Group flash. Additionally, he appears to have an SF combat patch on the sleeve of the BDU top he is wearing at home(you can see it as he picks up his child).
Update: In “honor” of Jesse Macbeth, Greyhawk has decided to start collecting all the urban legends about Iraq at MilBlogs. He’s hit the ground running.
Update: McQ at QandO demonstrates what Macbeth’s beret flash should look like.
Update (Bryan): It turns out MacBeth has a profile on Military.com. Three things worth knowing about Military.com. 1) It’s not officially connected with the DoD; 2) you don’t have to be current or prior military to join; and 3) there are no safeguards ensuring that what a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine claims as his awards and citations are true. Just to test that out I set up a profile and played around with the badges section. It let me claim to be a Master Veterinarian, a Command Pilot Astronaut and a Master Space Controller and posted them all on my profile. I am none of those things, and Military.com has no way of knowing if I am. It doesn’t cross reference anything I input with my DD-214, an official doc that summarizes my military career. Naturally, I turned those badges back off in my profile.
We have screen caps coming of MacBeth’s profile. He claims three basic combat jumps, presumably into Iraq though he does claim to have been in Afghanistan too, he claims a couple of awards for marksmanship and combat, and he posts a Ranger tab and a Special Forces tab. He also claims a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He has no friends among the patrons of Military.com, which I found completely unsurprising. He claims as his “interests,” “killing haajis,” yet also boasts of his membership in IVAW. How does the one square with the other?
Allah’s formating the screen caps and will post them here shortly.
Update: Here are the screencaps; click for larger images. His “friends” sidebar is, alas, barren.
Here are Military.com’s ribbon pages for reference. According to Macbeth’s profile, he has a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, an Army Good Conduct Medal, a National Defense Service Medal, an Army Service Ribbon, and an Overseas Service Ribbon.
Update: Blather Review e-mailed to call my attention to his update here, but I think his point about Macbeth’s jacket is even better.
Update: It seems pretty well established at this point that Macbeth wasn’t a Ranger. The next question is, was he in the Army in any capacity? Detailed Recruiter has his doubts.
Update: MilBlogs has flood-the-zone coverage of this story. Click and scroll for hours. The latest development: according to John of Argghhh, Macbeth has removed the awards from his Military.com profile.
Update: Bryan took a screencap of Macbeth’s new Military.com profile, sans decorations. Click to enlarge.
Update: The Macbeth interview has been removed from YouTube … but it’s back up at the original site.
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The other difference is the police and other government agencies don’t typically have cops just walk into the store to buy something. They usually buy in bulk on a contract that goes through the Request For Proposals (RFP) process where the manufacturer or a wholesale distributor provides bids on what they will sell to the agency and for what price.
Besides, if it’s a gun store in a place like NY – he already can’t sell those weapons locally, so he’s not likely to have anything in the store anyway.
dentarthurdent on February 25, 2013 at 11:24 AM
“Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting or guarantee that we will bring gun deaths down to a thousand a year from what we’re at now,” Biden told reporters after meeting with Senate Democrats in the Capitol.
J_Crater on February 25, 2013 at 11:40 AM
I’d bet Romney’s $10k that violent crime rates go UP in the areas where law-abiding citizens’ gun rights are violated.
dentarthurdent on February 25, 2013 at 11:49 AM
But apparently Obama and his illegitimate NLRB can tell private companies where they may and may not build plants, witness Boeing. Every time somebody says but but but something-or-other can’t happen, I just laugh. Then groan.
Fenris on February 25, 2013 at 11:56 AM
Evidently, some ammunition companies are also refusing to sell to government – both because of 2d Amendment issues, and because of concerns about the quantity of ammunition some national government organizations are acquiring.
GWB on February 25, 2013 at 12:02 PM
Who’s doing this though?
Can’t find a comprehensive list anywhere. Jazz???
Also, from what I HAVE seen of the list, they’re mostly all small time companies – many I’ve never even heard of. So unless we see some big names join this list – S&W, Remington, Winchester, Colt, etc – I don’t see this causing much impact to the government entities they’re targeting.
dentarthurdent on February 25, 2013 at 12:17 PM
Perhaps not. However, “the cops” are the “tool” of politician’s and WILL use their guns, without hesitation, to execute these crafted laws.
And by the way, “the cops” don’t function based upon law … they function upon chain-of-command orders.
Carnac on February 25, 2013 at 12:34 PM
I don’t recall which ammunition companies were cited. I seem to recall the information was on a firearms blog/forum. (Which I will never be able to find right now.)
GWB on February 25, 2013 at 12:47 PM
I was hoping if Hot Air is going to post a thread on this topic, they would have a link to an actual comprehensive list somewhere.
I have the same problem with Fox News – way too many articles referring to photos or other things – but they don’t include the relevant photo or even links to it or other items.
dentarthurdent on February 25, 2013 at 12:57 PM
here you go:
blog 1
blog 2
Fenris on February 25, 2013 at 1:11 PM
.
If you believe LEO’s are Nazi’s willing to follow any order handed down the chain of command, you know nothing about LEO’s.
In my experience, they are MORE tuned in to the failings of politicians than your average person because they live with the “unintended consequences” politicians generate.
Please spare us your OWS, gramatically challenged ““the cops” are the “tool” of politician’s” nonsense.
I have never met a LEO/Mil who wanted to be on the wrong side of 100:1 odds – and 95% of both groups have NO illusions about what it would be likeif some jacka$$ politician ordered them to confiscate legally owned weapons.
PolAgnostic on February 25, 2013 at 1:17 PM
I think it depends on the cops themselves and where they are.
My county sheriff has publicly stated he will NOT enforce any laws that violate the 2nd Amendment. Some of the city cops I’m not so sure about – although most of the cops I’ve known personally would more likely be on our side (us “gun nuts” that is) of this issue.
However, if you look at comments made by some chiefs/sheriffs from places like Baltimore and Chicago, I get the impression they seem to be very willing to run out and start confiscating weapons – from law-abiding citizens – probably not so quick from the gang-bangers who are the actual problem.
dentarthurdent on February 25, 2013 at 1:52 PM
if the LEO’s don’t like it .. vote the b*stards out that crafted this “law”
conservative tarheel on February 25, 2013 at 2:25 PM
oh and you can add Barrett to the list.
conservative tarheel on February 25, 2013 at 2:28 PM
Thanks for posting those lists.
However, now that I’ve seen the lists, they confirm my concern that this is mainly an advertising gimmick for the little guys who depend on the pro-gun civilian customer base. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all in favor of it. But I doubt these companies are major sources of weapons and equipment for government agencies – who typically buy in large quantities via RFP. So this will have little to no impact unless the big boys jump in. Until S&W, Remington, Glock, Winchester, and other big manufacturers/distributors get in, it’s kind of a hollow gesture – or perhaps a hollow point (ok – bad pun, couldn’t resist ;) ).
dentarthurdent on February 25, 2013 at 2:57 PM
Not going ot happen with Remington. That’s owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a notoriously left-wing company. They also own Bushmaster, DPMS Firearms, Marlin (owned by Remington),and Advanced Armament Corporation, all of which were organized under the umbrella of Freedom Group, which, last I checked, Cerberus was trying to dump after Sandy Hook. Don’t know if they succeeded, though.
totherightofthem on February 25, 2013 at 3:38 PM
Darn – I should have looked that up before I bought my Marlin .22. I had one back in HS and it was a decent little rifle, and they’re cheap, so I got another for target plinking. I guess I should have paid a bit more and got the Ruger.
dentarthurdent on February 25, 2013 at 3:47 PM
It just means the cops won’t get special deals for being cops
Sounds good to me
Feel sad for the good cops, if a couple years down the road, their bosses are buying them buffoon guns from the ‘bend over’ manufacturers willing to issue Bloomberg approved non hurtful weapons
entagor on February 26, 2013 at 3:56 PM
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