Washington bureaucrats "who didn't do a thing ever overseas" have denied the nation's highest military accolades to two heroes, an angry Rep. Duncan Hunter said Thursday.
"These people have never fought a day in their lives," the California Republican told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" of decisions to refuse the Medal of Honor to the late Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, one of the most celebrated heroes of the war in Iraq, and to Army Staff Sgt. Earl D. Plumlee for his actions in Afghanistan.
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This week, Peralta's family accepted the Navy Cross, the nation's second-highest award for valor, on his behalf seven years after the Pentagon denied him the Medal of Honor, reports
NBC.
Peralta fell on a grenade during the battle for Fallujah in November 2004, and the Navy and Marine Corps had recommended the Medal of Honor, but then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates denied the award in 2008, over questions whether Peralta was too injured to understand his actions.
"He was hit by a ricochet in the back his head, fell down," said Hunter, himself a former Marine and Iraq War veteran. "He grabbed the grenade and pulled it to his body. All the Marines said they lived because of what he did.
"At the boot camp in San Diego where Marines go through, they yell his name doing drills. He's a Marine Corps hero now, but they called his falling on the grenade an 'involuntary spasm.'"
Plumlee, meanwhile, received the Silver Star, two levels down from the Medal of Honor, which is still a recognition of valor but not at the level it should have been, said Hunter.
Plumlee, a former reconnaissance Marine and Green Beret with the Army's 1st Special Forces Group, was with soldiers responding to an attack in the summer of 2013, when Taliban insurgents struck at a coalition military base in Afghanistan and fighters armed with suicide vests and weapons came through a wall, reports
The Washington Post.
"They were blowing up around him with pellets shooting off," said Hunter. "He saved a soldier, fired his pistol, killed guys with his grenades."
Several military leaders, including Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, who has been nominated to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended Plumlee for the Medal of Honor. Instead, on May 1, Plumlee received the Silver Star after the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID) investigated claims that he tried to illegally sell a rifle scope online. No charges came as a result of the investigation.
"So the award comes back here, he gets investigated by the Army investigation wing for some bologna thing which the Army likes to do a bit, and that was downgraded from a Silver Star," said Hunter.
"He went from the Medal of Honor to the Silver Star because the Secretary of Army didn't think he should have gotten the Medal of Honor ... the bureaucrats here that didn't do a thing ever overseas turned it down."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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