By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor
Congressman Duncan Hunter, “flat earther” climate change denialist and extremist crank now claims the Obama administration is plotting against Jews in the military. Hunter, in response to the revocation of both a Silver Star and Distinguished Service Cross from Green Beret Captain Matthew Goldsteyn, accuses Obama of “retaliation” against Jews in the military as part of the president’s personal war on Israel.
Goldsteyn, after a 3 year investigation by the Army, was stripped of his medals under veiled circumstances tied to the killing of what the Post called a “known enemy fighter.” Goldsteyn is not facing criminal charges though the army has not denied that a murder investigation is underway.
Goldsteyn, a West Pointer,was awarded the medals for an episode in Afghanistan in 2010. Known conspiracy theorist Hunter’s response done in concerts with Jane Harmon’s “Daily Beast” website is quoted by the Post:
“Hunter, a former Marine officer and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, alleged in the Daily Beast on Tuesday that the Army “went to extraordinary lengths to investigate Golsteyn,” threatening his fellow soldiers and offering them immunity. In a Dec. 4 letter to Army Human Resources Command, Hunter said the revocation appears to be ‘retaliatory and vindictive.'”
“The Army has been unable to present substantive evidence while an overwhelming number of first-person accounts provided to Army investigators uphold Matt’s record as a top-level operator,” said Hunter’s letter, which the congressman’s office released to The Post.
There are a number of curious issues with Goldsteyn. The following quote is from an academic paper written by Goldsteyn in 2014:
“We enjoyed repeated interactions with the local populace because we lived with them, fighting for them as well as alongside them,” Golsteyn wrote. “In a 60 day period, our medical clinic run by Green Berets with several Marine medics treated approximately 1,000 local Afghans. We executed multiple helicopter casualty evacuations for civilian victims of [improvised explosive devices] in addition to being the first responders to the scene in nearly every case.”
There are no “Marine medics,” at least not American ones. There are, however, Royal Marine medics serving in Afghanistan though never with Captain Goldsteyn. There are, however, US Navy Corpsmen, who serve with Marines. They wear Navy insignia and Navy uniforms and are referred to using Navy rank, typically Petty Officers as opposed to “Corporal or Sergeant.” Within the military, seemingly small mistakes like this are not seen as harmless. Any “hands on” commander with US Navy personnel under their command that is utterly unaware who they are, what their uniform insignia mean and the history of their organization is suspect. This isn’t all that is wrong about Goldsteyn, that and running to the Israel lobby when backed into a corner.
There is also the wording and nature of the original medal citation as well:
Golsteyn’s Silver Star came for actions on Feb. 20, 2010. He assembled his unit after his base had come under sniper fire from an insurgent wielding a Dragunov rifle, according to an Army narrative of his actions. He directed his troops to launch an assault across 700 meters of open fields, but an armored truck known as a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle sank into mud under gunfire after about 175 meters.
Under heavy machine-gun and sniper fire, Golsteyn ran about 150 meters to the trapped MRAP to retrieve a powerful 84mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, an anti-tank weapon. While moving under gunfire, he coordinated a medical evacuation for the wounded Afghan soldier and then opened fire with the Carl Gustav, said the Army narrative, which was obtained by The Post.
“Captain Golsteyn was alone running in the open through enemy gun fire that had over 80 men pinned down, and from the crow’s nest on top of [Forward Operating Base] McQueary, it looked like Captain Golsteyn was alone fighting 30 enemy fighters out in the poppy fields,” the award narrative said.
Enemy reinforcements continued to arrive on the battlefield, so Golsteyn organized airstrikes by both F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets and a Predator drone. No American or coalition troops were killed in the battle despite a barrage of enemy fire that lasted four hours, the narrative said.
I went over this report with US Army Special Forces Colonel Jim Hanke (ret). The smell was nauseating. It is more than a reasonable guess that the medals were issued to cover up a major command error on behalf of a West Pointer, whether “Jewish” or not. Let’s look at the errors:
- Offering targets to a sniper in an open ground assault can only lead to trading American lives, perhaps more than one, for a sniper likely to escape anyway. As strategies to, this is pure incompetence.
- The story about the anti-tank weapon is fascinating, were the enemy to have actually had a tank, which they didn’t.
- Does anyone notice that the US was guarding heroin production here? Could this, just perhaps, be why no medals should be given?
- The story about the 80 Marines penned down while “it looked like Captain Goldsteyn was alone fighting 30 enemy fighters out in the poppy fields” is pure manure. No award narrative would ever say what something “looked like,” not a legitimate one at least.
- It is almost impossible to read one of these things without having a “lone commander” run hither and yon while his cowering troops cry for their mothers. There is always the requisite “coordinating medical evacuation” as well, all pretty much a sign that the manure is getting deeper.
Let’s look again at how the Post has dressed this up:
“Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn was leading a Special Forces team in Afghanistan in 2010 when an 80-man mission he assembled to hunt insurgent snipers went awry. One of the unit’s five vehicles sank in mud, a gunshot incapacitated an Afghan soldier fighting alongside the Americans, and insurgents maneuvered on them to rake the soggy fields with machine-gun fire.”
Did we get that right, “insurgents maneuvered on them to rake the soggy fields with machine-gun fire?” This is the kind of thing where “fragging” often takes place, or at least during Vietnam it did. What do they actually mean when they say the enemy “maneuvered” on them? Where were the other four vehicles? Who would have been stupid enough to take units across a swamp when the enemy has RPGs?
No matter how you look at this, Goldwyn comes out a loser. Then again, with an enemy pouring heavy fire onto 80 pinned down US “troops” for 4 hours and hitting nothing, maybe Goldwyn wasn’t the biggest idiot on the field that day. Along with that, we may have had the worst enemy sniper in history as well.
What really happened? An incompetent commander, almost always a West Pointer, out of arrogance stupidly walked his men into an ambush while “hot dogging” a frontal assault, with the lives of others at risk. When his own incompetence put his men in a trap any idiot could see, he got on the radio and screamed for help. What he didn’t do is gather adequate reconnaissance, use flank security, and move forward with fire support and smoke, as he would have been taught in West Point.
In fact we wonder what unit he is supposedly commanding. However, there is something in the Post story that is more telling. The Post refers to the individual Goldsteyn is alleged to have killed or ordered killed, the story is not specific, as “a known enemy fighter and bomb maker.” They cite “officials” familiar to the case.” The Post is well known for fabricating sources to support agenda driven narratives. This is far from an exception, as with earlier stories about US policies in Ukraine or Syria, repeatedly shown to have been wishful fabrications. What the Post does is put up totally false headlines for a story, include “soft quotes” from known and admitted sources” and then back their headlines with “soft sources,” invariably invented, a cheap psychological warfare methodology.
In used car sales it is called “bait and switch.”
As for the other issue, Duncan Hunter, Netanyahu’s errant stepchild in congress, and his allegations of Jewish persecution, these issues are still in play. However, Goldsteyn will need something more than the Post article to pull his proverbial nuts out of the fire.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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