Stolen Green Beret?: VA Secretary Robert McDonald Falsely Claimed He Served In Special Forces

24 Feb, 2015 by Samuel Gonzalez

Print this article Font size -16+

Serving in the 82 Airborne is honorable service indeed. But, apparently not enough for Robert McDonald who wanted to pump up his volume.

Robert McDonald, the secretary of veterans affairs, wrongly claimed in a videotaped comment earlier this year that he served in special operations forces, the most elite units in the armed forces, when his military service of five years was spent almost entirely with the 82nd Airborne Division during the late 1970s reports The Huffington Post.

U.S. special operations forces (SOF) are composed of exhaustively trained and highly capable troops from each military service, including the Green Berets, Army Rangers, Delta Force and Navy SEALs — but not the 82nd Airborne. They are certified to undertake the most dangerous and delicate missions, including, famously, the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. Special operators are a close-knit community deeply hostile to outsiders who try to claim the coveted mantle of special operations.

McDonald, a retired corporate executive who took over the VA last June as the agency was sinking in scandal, made the claim in late January as he was touring a rundown Los Angeles neighborhood during a nationwide count of homeless veterans. He was accompanied by a CBS-TV news crew, which recorded an exchange between McDonald and a homeless man who told McDonald he had served in special forces.

“Special forces? What years? I was in special forces!” McDonald told the homeless man. That exchange was broadcast in a Jan. 30 CBS News story about the VA’s efforts to find and house homeless veterans.

More here

Samuel Gonzalez

Samuel Gonzalez is the editor-in-chief of The Last Tradition, a blog he started in April 2009. Samuel is one of the top Latino bloggers in the country and his blog has been linked by Gateway Pundit, Right Wing News, Instapundit, Legal Insurrection, American Thinker and other top conservative blogs. He's a strong Reagan conservative, a Rush Limbaugh disciple, an unconventional Evangelical who not only takes on Liberal orthodoxy, but also challenges other so-called soft conservatives afraid to buck political correctness.