The VA jobs counsellor you knew was getting more than mere acceptance from his charade; he had a good job and a big promotion, probably somewhat due to his tall stories. If his VN service was bunk, all the rest of his resume was suspect too. The sad thing is his MS disability probably would have given him an advantage when he was hired and promoted.

IMO there are two factors that cause guys to fabricate war service. In almost all the cases I've read about, the poser was getting some sort of financial reward by virtue of his "service". The second factor is a psychological need for "hero" status and the respect that goes with it. It's interesting that these guys are never modest when talking themselves up....on the contrary they are very talkative when sharing their war stories.

The Army is an odd social organization, and a combat patch is not always a benefit. When I returned with the 3d ACR from Iraq at the end of the 1st Gulf War, if you didn't have a combat patch you were looked down on. One reason for this perception was that many of the troops on rear detachment had ...er..."issues". We all knew that most of the stay behind guys were working a physical, emotional, or "family problem" strategy to avoid deployment. When Regiment re-integrated those guys back into platoons the reception was rather frosty. One tank platoon in my troop refused to allow an E-6 back in their platoon due to the fact everybody knew he was a gutless weasel.
However, as the old Gulf War guys were PCSed to new duty stations, many of the new guys that replaced them didn't have service in the Gulf. In time these non-combat patch guys outnumbered the troops that had deployed to Iraq. Many of these guys were NCOs and officers who had been in TDA units, or whatever. I guess these guys had a chip on their shoulders or something, because as the 3d ACR GW veterans became a minority, attitudes changed to the point that the GW guys were "dinosaurs" or relics". It is also interesting that DA made a show of not having any preference to the GW vets when it came to selection for promotion, re-assignment or schools.

I too wondered about POW status verification by the VA when I read that AP news story. I wonder if those characters falsified their DD form 214s. It's not hard to do if the clerks doing the verifying aren't looking at the documents with a critical eye. For example, a number of supposed veterans of the war in Iraq/Afghanistan that have joined antiwar organizations have been exposed as frauds, Jesse MacBeth (one of Cindy Sheehan's old buddies) probably being the most flamboyant faker. He claimed to be a former Ranger NCO combat vet and in real life he was kicked out of Basic Training after 21 days in service. Someone posted his DD 214 and it was so screwed up it was laughable.

Right after Desert Storm Pres. Bush #1 opened up early retirement for anyone with more than 10 years of active service in the Army (the retirement % was pro-rated), and many people took the money and bailed out of the Army. Many of these guys and gals were not exactly model soldiers and many were already looking over their shoulders because of the Army Quality Management Program (QMP) and the re-enlistment/retention control points. For example, there was a Sgt E-5 in my platoon that was approaching his 12th year of service and he knew there was NO WAY he was going to be recommended for promotion. He prudently grabbed the early retirement option rather than hit his 12th anniversary of service and be put out with a lump sum cash settlement and no retirement benefits. There also was a 11C E-7 in my troop that was a fat dopey slob with 17 years time in service who was prime QMP material; he too jumped at the opportunity to take around 45% of his monthly base pay as retirement, plus benefits.

The Army works in mysterious ways though. The tanker E-6 that I mentioned earlier (the guy that the other 19Ks in my troop wouldn't let back into their plt.) actually came down on the first ANCOC school list after Desert Storm. Here was a guy that weaseled out of his plt during a wartime deployment and publicly disgraced himself, and DA thought he deserved promotion!!!

Perhaps I'm cynical, but nothing surprises me. As long as a certain status confers preferential treatment, there will be imposters. I'm sure that there were members of veterans' organizations 100 years ago that claimed to be Civil War soldiers. Heck, there were probably ancient Greeks that claimed they marched into Persia with Alexander the Great.

I once met a guy who claimed to be a Korean war vet. I latter discovered he was 14 years old in 1953.