Rarely do I have first-person knowledge of a national news article, but in this case, I do, and I am absolutely compelled to comment here as many of you have reached out to me for my thoughts here. I'm *more* than happy to provide them. In 2005, Gov. Wes Moore and I served in Afghanistan together - and by all accounts (I wish he'd post his OER -- top block, top 1% of all time, promote early, etc.). His efforts directly led to a massive increase in the effectiveness of the program at the time to convince folks to switch allegiance from the Taliban, and he continually put himself at risk out of FOB Salerno and the surrounding areas in eastern Afghanistan. I personally witnessed the results of this as the CJTF-76 JISE Chief that year and my soldiers from that still remember him coming in to brief us and always ask me about him! There is *no question* that for his efforts, he was nominated for a bronze star (all of us frankly were) -- and now LTG Mike Fenzel confirms that -- and the fact that he doesn't even have an ARCOM from that time further reinforces the award was truly *lost*, not even downgraded. Wes left Afghanistan (as we all did) with full knowledge of what he'd been nominated for - and used that in his application for the White House Fellowship, at the *urging* of his superiors. Now, we can absolutely say in hindsight he should have said he was nominated instead of saying he was awarded, because factually at the time of the application, he was nominated for the award and had not been awarded it -- that is true because these things take months to normally process -- but to equate this a stolen valor case -- for $&*#& sake is absolutely absurd. I appreciate that Reid Epstein had a couple of guys in his ears spewing this garbage, and means well - but The New York Times, this could have been a much more balanced article. Put this in perspective - in 2005, Wes Moore was a reservist who truly *chose* to deploy with an Infantry Brigade Combat Team to one of the most dangerous provinces in Afghanistan - spent a year there and served with incredible valor -- and we are talking about stolen valor? America, we are better than this. New York Times, we are better than this. Wake the *#$ up. To my veteran colleagues who care about this - I'd love for you to reshare my thoughts here.
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2wThank you for your service.