Is the Gasque issue a big deal and is it still an issue? Looong.

It could be.

As shown by the evidence provided, Candidate Dorothy Gasque served in Iraq with 2/11 Armored Cavalry Regiment.

But words, you see, have meaning.  "Lead combat patrols" has an entirely different meaning than "participated in combat patrols."  "Organize traffic checkpoints" has an entirely different meaning than "participated in traffic checkpoints."  Being a "Sergeant of the Guard" doesn't come close to rising to the level of "manage base security."

Ms. Gasque is a college graduate in mathematics, she claims.  I have no reason to disbelieve that, but an advanced education should show understanding of the impact and the meaning of words.

Unfortunately, I am reminded of another local politician who ran for Congress around here a few years back, one Jon Russell.

Russell had a few problems when it came to telling the truth, the majority of which are documented here:  Jon Russell Watch.

Russell's wife, Sarah, admitted as much to me via email:

I'm sure no one will believe anything I have to say on the topic, but I promised someone that if I had the time and energy, I would jump on an refute any known fallacies on this blog. SO, Here's for one: Jon Russell may have used aliases and fake names in the past but has not commented, blogged or otherwise produced written material under any fake names for over 6 months. I personally have no idea who these fake names belong to, but I have to refute the false allegations. I know it must come as a shock to some that there might be other persons out their using fake names and disliking this or that political figure, but I'm breaking the news now: there must be! Thanks for letting me set the record straight.

Sarah Russell - August 17, 2011 11:28 PM

Well, according to Sarah, when she sent me this, Russell hadn't used fake names or aliases for a whole 6 months. Impressive.  But that wasn't his only issue:

Among his many, many problems was this penchant for lying about his education:

Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Both the Columbian and Thomas Edison verify it: Russell's claim of a college degree is fake.

Keep in mind the fact that my interview with the Columbian, DONE IN WRITING, did NOT say some of what is printed here.

But here is the entire entry, unfortunately limited to the not-well-read political blog on the website as opposed to being printed in the newspaper... like it should have been.

Jon Russell's degree
Blog: Political Beat

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By Columbian Politics (Columbian Staff)

July 6, 2010

Did Jon Russell, the Washougal city councilor who’s running for an open seat in the 18th Legislative District, misrepresent his academic credentials to precinct committee officers?

Yes, says Kelly Hinton, who leveled the accusation at Russell last week on his Clark County Politics blog.

No, insists Russell. So we checked it out.

Russell allegedly told 18th District precinct committee officers that he had a two-year associate degree from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey. The college offers degrees through correspondence courses as well as at its bricks-and-mortar campus.

The college confirms that Russell enrolled in courses there, but says it has not granted him a degree. 

Russell says he has earned more than the 60 credit hours required for an AA degree. He told The Columbian he has sent for his transcript to prove it.

But he concedes that he never got around to doing the paperwork required to get the actual degree. 

When he looked into it last week, he said, he learned he would have to reenroll as a fulltime student in order to apply.

Joe Guzzardo, spokesman for Thomas Edison, confirmed the policy. Not only that, he said, it would cost Russell $630 to apply for the AA degree under the college’s “reenrollment to graduate” policy. Until last March, he said, the cost would have been $2,332 for former students living out of state.

“In order for someone like Mr. Russell to finish, they would have to take advantage of the ‘reenrollment to graduate’ policy,” Guzzardo said.

Russell maintains that he never said he actually had the degree. “I’ve always said I’ve earned my degree,” he told The Columbian. “I’ve never said I obtained my degree.”

Nevertheless, he said Tuesday, “I have submitted a ‘request for graduation’ form with Thomas Edison to have my diploma sent to me.”

Russell says Hinton’s blog “is designed to do nothing more than to tear down my credibility” because Hinton, a former legislative staffer, backs one of Russell’s opponents, Ann Rivers, in the 18th District race. “He is trying to turn over every rock,” Russell said.

Both Hinton and Rivers confirmed that they are business associates in a political consulting firm. Rivers called Hinton “a friend.”

But she said she’s not behind Hinton’s blog attacks. “I don’t need to tear down someone else’s building to make myself look taller,” she said.

Hinton confirmed in an e-mail that he supports Rivers’ candidacy, but he said he began criticizing Russell when he was still a candidate for the 3rd Congressional District seat. Russell dropped out of that race in February and joined a crowded field for the open 18th District position.

Kathie Durbin

Unfortunately for the reader not in the know, this article is factually incorrect in ways that just mystify me.

In my blog or in my email to Durbin, I never alleged that Russell had told the PCO's of the 18th District that he had a degree. I made no note of that whatsoever.

What I told Durbin was this:

The evidence I have provided; that Russell has indicated his wife is a “physician” to the 18th District PCO’s, that he called her a ”doctor” in the Vancouver Business Journal and then changed the story to “family nurse practitioner” after I blogged about it and that Sarah Russell has advertised herself as a doctor at the Columbia River Gorge Medical Clinic in a newspaper owned by the Columbian, if I’m not mistaken, is not something I fabricated.

For whatever the reason, there was no mention of these allegations, which are as much a lie as Russell's fake degree.

And let's review the verbiage Russell was using on his website:

Jon’s experience in politics started as he was working on his degree in political science first at Vincennes University and finished his degree at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, NJ.

CLEARLY this was meant to deliberately infer that he had completed a BACHELOR'S DEGREE, and NOT an AA.  Particularly since TESC didn't OFFER an AA degree in Poli Sci.

How Durbin could confuse Russell lying to the PCO's about his degree and lying to the PCO's about his wife is just beyond me.

For those of us actually possessed of 4 year degrees, we recognize the major difference, parsed by Russell, between having more then the number of credits required for an AA degree and actually completing... and receiving... a bachelor's degree.

Russell knows that. Thus his Clintonesque, "it all depends on what the definition of "is," is response:

Russell maintains that he never said he actually had the degree. “I’ve always said I’ve earned my degree,” he told The Columbian. “I’ve never said I obtained my degree.”

Really?

So, this is the kind of representation Russell has to offer? One where we have to parse everything he says to figure it out?

Russell whines that my blog: "... is designed to do nothing more than to tear down my credibility” because Hinton, a former legislative staffer, backs one of Russell’s opponents, Ann Rivers, in the 18th District race. “He is trying to turn over every rock,” Russell said.

Well, the thing about credibility is this: If you don't lie, fabricate or exaggerate, then I've got nothing to write about... do I?

Unfortunately, the paper deliberately left out the FACT that I began nailing Russell's "credibility" as soon as he announced for Congress; instead of verifying that truth, relying alternately on the "I said I began criticizing Russell" when he announced for Congress, thereby deliberately failing to destroy Russell's position that my primary motivation for Jon Russell Watch wasn't my support of Ann Rivers, but instead, my opposition to Russell.

Typical.

And by the way, Jon.... I'm given to understand that you brought your own lies to the attention of the paper (Not that, since they read my blogs several times a day, they didn't know about them anyway) so I wanted to give you a hearty "Well done!"

So, while whoever wrote this has a fact check problem with a narrow-focused view with blinders, leaving out much of the other allegations which directly impact on Russell's increasingly non-existent credibility, this is, I suppose, better than nothing.

Barely. But this is also, I suppose, what passes for "journalism" at the lazy C.

Cross posted at Clark County Politics.

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First of all, I'm totally disinterested in party when it comes to those who lie either to get elected or to stay elected.

Second, Russell claimed to be Republican.  That made zero difference to me; it NEVER makes any difference to me.  Those who look at my meager effort here for the past several months will see that I have focused almost entirely on Republican liars at almost all levels.... from Congress down to the local level.  ANd there certainly are a great many to chose from.

Some of those in the GOP I supported the most now also hate me the most because I do everything I can to hold them accountable for what they promise and what they, instead, do.

This isn't a latter-day development; I have been doing this for years.

Which is why I continue to do it now.
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I stumbled across this article that will explain this better than I, particularly from the military viewpoint.
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Why Veterans Hate Posers So, So, So, SO Very Much

December 31, 2017 by Scott Faith ~ Leave A Comment

(Originally posted 13DEC14)

I think it’s logical for people who have never been in the military to wonder why some veterans have such a deep, abiding, and visceral hatred of military posers—the people who pretend to be what we are.  After all, this is a free country, what’s the harm in a couple of lies to impress a girl, score a free drink, or get 10% off at your local hardware store?  A little exaggeration never hurt anyone, right?

Wrong.  Dead wrong.   A veteran lives in a world where honor and integrity have real meaning.  Military posers are charlatans who defile the memory of our dead and damage the credibility of the living by contaminating the validity of our service.  They are cowards in life and are miserable excuses of humanity who are willing to perjure their souls for honor they do not have and can never attain; honor which is a gift of self and a personal testament of worth.  And we loathe them for it.

Most veterans, the ones who aren’t complete douches at least, don’t look down on civilians who never served in the military.  Most vets realize that without people like teachers and technicians, doctors and drivers, policemen and politicians, businessmen and busboys, our American system simply wouldn’t work.  There are many different ways to serve our country, including by simply being a responsible citizen.  The military is only one of those ways.

But there is a group of people that many veterans utterly detest, with every ounce of our collective being: military posers.  A military poser is someone who, through fabrication, exaggeration, omission, or lack of correction creates or allows to be created an incorrect perception of his or her military service status.  Simply put, if reasonable people think you are representing yourself as someone or something you are not, then you’re a poser.  Period.

Classless? Yes.  A poser? No.

So who isn’t a poser under this definition?  The short answer is, outward appearance on its own doesn’t count, it’s all about intent.  People who wear military-style fatigues to do rugged work like hunting, or simply to stay warm, are not posers.  Children who are obviously too young for military service aren’t posers.  People who wear military-themed clothing, including unit- or qualification-specific shirts or hats, are not automatically posers (do you think everyone wearing an NFL jersey played professional football?).  Legitimate re-enactors aren’t posers, and as for Airsofters… well, that’s debatable.  Anyway, even celebrities who wear stylized military uniforms or hipsters who wear military-style jackets or hats to be “ironic” aren’t posers, they’re just douchebags.  That’s an important difference.

But there are plenty of people out there who talk like us, dress up like us, and/or try to convince people that they are us.  They make up stories about anything from being a war hero to being a war criminal.  They are disgusting excuses for human beings and they make life harder for all real veterans out there, and they are loathed by the military community.  Let me explain:

To begin with, it’s important to understand the poser spectrum.  There are four general categories of military posers.  On the scale of hardest to easiest to detect, you have the “elite fabricators,” then “the exaggerators,” followed by the “let you assume-ers,” and finally the “outright inventors.”   The elite fabricators go to great lengths to falsify their military experience.  They order realistic-looking certificates, medals, and military regalia online and deeply research their roles.  They are often hard to sniff out and might even pass initial muster with real veterans… for a while.

Exaggerators actually served, but inflate or in some cases just make up important details.  These are the kinds of people who, for example, might have been a mechanic (an important job!) but want everyone to think that he was some kind of elite ninja SpecOps killer.  They generally have enough knowledge about the military to fake it with their civilian friends, but usually get outed quickly enough when in the company of other veterans, especially those with the kind of experience that the poser is claiming to have.

The “assumers” give you very few details, but benefit from letting you fill in the details they leave out.  They often, but not always, had some kind of military service… but it wasn’t quite good enough for their egos.  So, they give a few details and let you assume away the rest.  For example, someone you meet might make a comment like, “Well, back when I was with Group…” which may lead you to believe that the individual in question is a Special Forces-qualified individual.  When the individual’s story falls apart later, he can always fall back on, “Well, I never SAID that I was a Green Beret.”  Right, Sparky, but you actively tried to get people to think it, and you did nothing to disabuse them of the notion once they got it into their heads.  You’re a poser, bro.

The final category of military poser, the outright inventors, never served and usually have very little backstop to their tales of supposed service.  They invent their military careers out of thin air, often on the spot, and consequently their stories tend to not survive first contact with anyone who knows anything at all about military service.  As an example, I remember one time I was gassing up my truck outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina when I was approached by a man in ragged clothes who reeked of both cigarettes and beer.  He asked me for money “for food,” and when I refused, he tried to play the veteran card.  “Come on man, I was in the Army too!” he claimed.  “Cool story bro, what was your MOS?” I responded.  He gave me a confused look.  “MOS?” …and the encounter went downhill from there.

There can be hybrid posers; for example, an exaggerator who never made it out of basic training might become an elite fabricator courtesy of the Internet, and may be able to hide it all behind a mask of assumptions and on-the-spot inventions when questioned about his service.  Hybrids can be notoriously difficult to spot, but fortunately they’re pretty rare.  Unfortunately, sometimes they can get a lot of mileage out of fabricating, exaggerating, inventing, and letting people assume things about their military resume.

Jesse MacBeth, imaginary “Army Ranger” and fake war criminal. How many things can you find wrong with this clown’s uniform, or with his story?

Generally, though, most real veterans can sniff out posers out pretty easily, and every veteran deals with posers in his or her own way.  This can run the gamut from ignoring the poser, to public shaming, to making “funny cause it’s true” videos and cartoons, to straight up hostility.  Take for example the recent viral video of a legit vet confronting a fake “Ranger” at the mall (there’s this, too Go Army, Beat Navy!).  Unfortunately, the “summarized ass whipping” is not recognized as a legal course of action, so most of the time military posers do not get the punishment they so richly deserve.  The Stolen Valor Act gave some relief, but important parts of it didn’t pass Constitutional muster and got overturned.  So now it’s pretty much an open invitation for military posers, to include well-known celebrity actors like Shia LaBeouf, to carry on however they want.

Now that you understand what a poser is and is not, why does it even matter?  Well, there are several problems with military posers.  First and foremost, they are committing fraud. Every one of them.   Being a veteran imparts certain prestige and confers certain benefits to which those who have not earned them are not entitled to partake.  Falsely claiming military service, whether it is to get into someone’s pants or to get some other tangible benefit, is fraud and should be treated as such.  The military is a values-based organization and integrity is a valued trait within the veteran community.  We simply have no patience for liars.

There is a more insidious side to military posers as well.  In addition to those who claim to be war heroes, we also have those who claim, for whatever reason, to be war criminals.  The idiots at Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) promoted another idiot named Jesse MacBeth, who claimed, among other things, to have committed hideous wartime atrocities while serving as a Ranger in Iraq.  Nor is MacBeth the only idiot to have confessed to fake war crimes.  Unfortunately, these reports are used by those with anti-military and anti-US agendas, including the very people we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, to attempt to cause harm to our veterans, our armed services, and our country.  The veteran community takes this personally.

Finally, there is the sense of personal injustice that veterans feel when a poser claims credit for something he or she hasn’t done.  Our accomplishments in the military are the things that we worked, bled, suffered, and for some of our brothers and sisters in arms, died for.  We will be damned if we allow ANYONE to claim those same credentials undeservedly.  I’m not going to explain it any further than that.  If you worked HARD for something significant in your life, you understand what I’m talking about, and how veterans feel about impostors.  If you haven’t, then you won’t get it and no amount of explanation will help.  It’s enough to understand that as a rule, veterans love America and hate posers.  And you should too.
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Is this an issue for Candidate Gasque?

I'll leave that up to the reader to decide.