Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2004/01/14/a_bright_shining_lie_whos_right_about_vietnam.php
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
B.G. Burkett fought in Vietnam, but it didn't prepare him for a longer war when he returned home. Confronted with a stereotype that all Vietnam veterans were deranged, baby-killing draftee victims, Burkett became a one-man army, attempting to make sure the truths he saw in Vietnam were not lost amid a sea of revisionism. He set out to prove that the average Vietnam veteran is not a suicidal heroin addict but a well-adjusted, honorable businessman. His search for this truth uncovered a scam of unparalleled size. In Stolen Valor, co-written with Dallas reporter Glenna Whitley, Burkett recounts almost two decades of battles for Vietnam's true legacy. He attacks the pervasive myths of the Vietnam War through revelatory exposes on the national Vietnam Veterans of America organizations and countless fake Vietnam veterans who claim national service to gain local prestige or to get away with murder. He exposes Senator John Kerry as a dishonorable man, using someone else's medals to gain political power. Burkett shows the Agent Orange claims against the Dow Chemical company to be based upon junk science. Burkett does not stop there. He proceeds to reveal a grand scam involving thousands of fake veterans, the United States Veterans Administration, and billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. The uncovering of this massive fraud culminated late last year, when President Bush awarded Burkett the Army's Distinguished Civilian Service Award.
All told, Stolen Valor is an exhaustively researched book, calling upon hundreds of government documents and military personnel records retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act (Burkett is the country's most prolific FOIA user), independent studies, and personal accounts. The evidence is so overwhelming that it is impossible to discount. Yet Burkett not only reveals the oft-hidden wrongs. He proposes solutions and offers practical tips on how to avoid being conned as much of America has been and provides information from others working to right this wrong. It is through this segment that I believe the most lasting impact of this book will come.
As a result of such dedicated research, the book does become somewhat tedious in its nearly 700 pages as the stories of Burkett's discovery of forgeries are told. Nevertheless, the subject matter is so compelling, and the text so rife with anecdotes that the occasional tedium is forgivable. It is not a book for the passive; readers will share Burkett's outrage. For anyone interested in the true story of the Vietnam War and the brave men who fought it, this is one of the best books you can buy, correcting what many Americans have been erroneously taught. Beyond exposing a multi-billion dollar fraud, Stolen Valor helps to rehabilitate a nation's pride in its fallen warriors, restores honor to the true veterans, and (I hope) brings justice to those who hijacked the true history of Vietnam.