NEW YORK (AFP) - A New Yorker who for 40 years passed himself off as Vietnam war hero who had been decorated for extreme gallantry was sentenced to community service Wednesday after being outed as a fraud.
According to prosecutors, Louis Lowell McGuinn claimed to have been a lieutenant colonel in the US special forces and had used his fake military history since 1968 to get work or to win kudos at social functions.
His military records showed that McGuinn had indeed been in the US Army and served in Vietnam, but was discharged as a private without being decorated.
In 2006, McGuinn, who is now in his 60s, attended a ball in New York's glitzy Pierre Hotel wearing the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, awarded for being wounded in action.
Fortunately a REAL Lieutenant Colonel noticed that he was a fake. McGuinn was recently prosecuted under the "Stolen Valor Act" which goes after these fakes. McGuinn was given 1 year of probation and 100 hours of community service.
As one of the prosecutors said;
"Fraudulently wearing these medals is an affront to their memory, and an affront to the heroism of the surviving service men and women who were legitimately awarded them,"
Thai's take?
To me, that sentence was extremely light. I would've given him alot harsher sentence than 1 year of probation.
REAL warriors do not wear their medals because they like to show off.
REAL warriors wear those medals for those who cannot wear them.
They wear them ... for those whose actions are so heroic that they sometimes pay for them with their very lives.
If you've had enough of getting your bile up by this piece of trash McGuinn, then please check out a REAL hero, Michael Monsoor.
-Thai
2 comments:
Just like in Manchurian Candidate.
"Real heroes" are usually too modest to accept the epithet.
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