Army admits mistake in Special Forces MOS OEF OIF veteran

Army Pulls Candidate's Mistakenly-Awarded SF MOS
Military.com
by Bryant Jordan
Jul 04, 2012

The Army has revoked the Special Forces military occupational specialty of an Arkansas political candidate who claimed he served as a Green Beret in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kenneth Aden, a Democrat running against incumbent Rep. Steve Womack for Arkansas' 3rd District, has said in interviews he served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Green Beret, though a DD-214 and other documents he released to substantiate the claim only raised questions.

In a statement Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the Special Warfare Training Center at Fort Bragg, N.C., said Aden was dropped from Special Forces training in April 2008 "after failing twice to pass the Light Weapons Exam and Hands-on Mortar Exam."

Nevertheless the center in June 2008 erroneously issued an order awarding him the 18 B MOS – Special Forces Weapons Sergeant – and then failed to catch the mistake. When told last week that the Army called Aden's MOS order a mistake and had revoked it, campaign spokesman Vincent Leibowitz said Aden never received orders pulling the MOS.

That turns out to be true, since the Army only noticed and corrected its mistake after media attention focused on Aden's military background, according to training center spokeswoman Janice Burton.

Retired Special Forces Master Sgt. Jeff "JD" Hinton, who has exposed many phony veterans or troops who embellished their records, says Aden had to know all along that he never was Special Forces.
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