Just out of curiosity I did a google image search for Ranger School Graduation pictures. I found them!! What Moron thought THAT was a good idea?!! Now every "wanna-be" and "wish-I-had-been" will download and print "his" class picture!! Well, there goes one more reality check.

I think the Army Ranger Assoiation did it.I am not sure.

Well, if they actually used a high resolution scanner, you wouldn't have that problem (or someone claiming a class picture as their "class"). Did you have a lot of PX Rangers in your day? I've only personally known of one, and it was an E-7 that was quickly relieved of his platoon, although there was a LT exposed just before I arrived to my second unit.

"RTB could maybe institute a MOUT/Dessert phase at NTC" Wow! I thought the blueberry pancakes in the Mountains were the best. A dessert phase would even top that. I'm sure future generations of Ranger students are rooting for a MOUT phase. :)

my spelling has room for improvement.your thread gave me the best chuckle this year.God I hope I spelled correctly this time still laughing.

It was definitely a typo since you didn't fat finger two "s"s the second time you spelled desert. Sorry though, I couldn't resist. I went through in '97, so I didn't get to do a desert phase. My understanding was that it was too much money to fly out to Dugway and later Bliss, as well as to maintain a fourth battalion in the austere defense budget days of the mid 90's.

I ran across this this morning. Interesting but disturbing that it is so widespread. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wall Street Journal May 6, 2005 Pg. B1 Veterans' Web Sites Expose Pseudo Heroes, Phony Honors By Amy Chozick, Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal From the minute FBI Special Agent Thomas A. Cottone Jr. saw Walter K. Carlson, he suspected that something wasn't quite right about the decorated war hero. The two men met at a Washington Township, N.J., funeral service for Marine Second Lt. John Thomas Wroblewski, 25 years old, killed in Iraq in last spring. "Thousands of people were there, but when that captain walked past me wearing the Navy Cross and a chest full of medals and ribbons," Mr. Cottone says, "I whispered to my friend, something is wrong with that guy." Mr. Cottone, whose duties at the Federal Bureau of Investigation include investigating military imposters, subsequently followed his hunch, determining, he says, that Mr. Carlson, 59 years old and a local bus dispatcher, didn't earn the medals he was wearing; in fact, Mr. Cottone says, Mr. Carlson never even served in the military. Mr. Carlson declined to comment. It is illegal under federal law to wear an unauthorized military uniform or unearned decorations. Mr. Carlson was arrested, released on $10,000 bond and ordered to surrender all military materials. A trial was averted when he agreed to a pretrial probation program, says Mr. Cottone. With patriotism at a high plateau of late, the U.S. military currently receives a level of respect not seen since World War II. Unlike the Vietnam War era, today even those who oppose the war in Iraq profess to be staunch supporters of the men and women who serve there. The heightened admiration has given way to a growing number of military impostors, and in turn sparked an impassioned group of crusaders determined to expose the mock heros who festoon themselves with unearned medals. The FBI's Mr. Cottone estimates that for every actual Navy Seal today, at least 300 people falsely claim to be one. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society in Mount Pleasant, S.C., suspects that the number of people who falsely claim to have received a Medal of Honor is more than double the 124 living recipients. The Department of Veterans Affairs will prosecute only those military impostors who try to register for veterans' benefits. Law enforcement lacks the resources to investigate all but the most aggravated situations; as a result, the law that led to Mr. Carlson's arrest is rarely enforced. At the same time, military discharge papers and Purple Hearts can be bought on eBay by the dozen. Concerned with a burgeoning army of dissemblers, actual veterans and other are turning to the Internet to stop the fakers in their tracks. POWnetwork.org, HomeOfHeroes.com, AuthentiSEAL.org and VeriSEAL.org, among other Web sites, provide concerned citizens with a free investigation into a person's military status. AuthentiSEAL.org and VeriSEAL.org neither solicit nor accept funds. POWnetwork.org and HomeOfHeroes.com both have some sponsors but the vast majority of their funding comes out of their founders' own pockets. None of them make a profit from their endeavors. Once a fibber is detected by these sites, the jig is up. The investigators have no enforcement power of their own, but they will contact employers, family members, news organizations and even the federal government about the alleged phony. In some cases the fraudsters' personal information along with a photo will be posted on the Web. AuthentiSEAL.org, which investigates and reveals questionable Navy Seals, says it has exposed nearly 20,000 false ones since its launch in 2000 and currently receives about 20 to 50 inquiries per day; over 99.5% of the leads reveal an imposter, the group says. Inquirers range from a woman curious if her new boyfriend is a real Seal, to contractors in Iraq checking on a job applicant. "As long as the military is held in high repute, people will co-opt it for their own personal gain," says former Navy Seal William S. "Moose" Robinson, author of the self-published "No Guts No Glory: Unmasking Navy SEAL Impostors." Mr. Robinson, a 54-year-old blacksmith in Forsyth, Mo., served as a volunteer investigator for AuthentiSEAL.org, a nonprofit Web site that investigates and reveals phony Seals. "Falsely claiming to be a Seal is a direct insult to the veterans we've lost," he says. According to Mr. Robinson a surge of phonies emerge every time Hollywood releases a big action movie about the military. This year's "The Pacifier" starring Vin Diesel as a disgraced Navy Seal turned babysitter inspired a handful of impostors, reports AuthentiSEAL. VeriSeal.org, a similar Seal-busting service, maintains a "Hall of Shame" with photos of "phonies" -- even setting the record straight about dead ones. When Tony Maffatone, the Hollywood security exper

Thats Sad. I ran into a corectional officer once at a who was blowing smoke up peoples *#* about being a SEAL.He was telling a story about locking out of a sub swiming to sure in cuba and planting mines to the sides of cuban ships,then having to crawl through pommentos to the extraction point.It was really quite amuseing.I Listen to the tale and when he was finished I asked a few Questions on air borne ops.simple stuff terminal velocity,chutes they used etc.He informed me he was a SEAL that did not parachute.HA.He went on to explain that he was a part of a secret cell of SEAL team 6.I also once ran into a fella who stated he was in the USMC and was a Green Beret.

Most of the losers I run into claiming to be former SF, Ranger, SEAL, or Delta operators are out amoung the civilian population. When I was assigned to AC/RC, EVERYONE I ran into with prior service claimed to have been a member of one of the aforementioned organizations. It got to the point that I was becoming convinced that the largest export of Oklahoma was special operations personnel! Of course when pressed for details most resorted to the "If I tell you I'll have to kill you" copout. I have periodically run into active duty guys claiming to have been something "special" in a prior enlistment. I particularly enjoyed the kid who often told us about his days with the "Legion". The truley amusing ones are those that know so little about the role they are playing that they don't even realize when you've busted them and they just keep on telling tales.

I posted the same article on another board I frequent: http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?t=5705 Got a response of a pretty funny story of an imposter exposed in a chat room by one of the other board members.