Anti-war Clown of the Day

Jesse Macbeth goes to jail:

A man who tried to position himself as a leader of the anti-war movement by claiming to have participated in war crimes while serving in Iraq is facing federal charges of falsifying his record.

Jesse Adam Macbeth, 23, formerly of Phoenix, garnered attention on blogs and in some alternative media after he began claiming in 2005 to have been awarded a Purple Heart for his service, which he said included slaughtering innocents in a Fallujah mosque.

His story was contradicted by his discharge form, showing that he was kicked out of the Army after six weeks at Fort Benning, Ga., in 2003 because of his “entry level performance and conduct.”

A complaint unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle charged him with one count of using or possessing a forged or altered military discharge certificate, and one count of making false statements in seeking benefits from the Veterans Administration.

Apparently I'm prescient. Of this I wrote: Read the comments at SMASH's blog, the milblog forum and some of the others covering this, and you get a sense that many folks are hoping that Jesse goes to jail for this little charade. I haven't seen anything that definitively states that he can be prosecuted for this, and even if he could I wonder if that's the wisest course.

Perhaps it's better to simply let his lack of credibility and the avalanche of spew it's creating among his fellow travelers serve as punishment enough.

Did I say prescient? I meant wrong.