Former Vice President Joe Biden just took his campaign-trail gaffes to the next level.
Biden, The Washington Post reports, recently told a favorite story of his about how he traveled to Afghanistan to pin a Silver Star on a Navy captain when he was vice president. According to his most recent telling, this took place in the Kunar province, and the captain had retrieved a comrade's body from a ravine while under fire, but he didn't want the Silver Star, as he felt he didn't deserve it.
But the Post investigated and found that "almost every detail" of it "appears to be incorrect." Biden went to the Kunar province in 2008, before he was vice president, and the person who performed the rescue he was talking about was an Army specialist, who "never had a Silver Star, or any other medal, pinned on him by Biden" and instead received the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama at the White House in 2014.
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Biden did once pin a medal to a soldier who felt he didn't deserve it, but the Post found that it happened in Wardak, and the Army staff sergeant had been trying to save a friend from a burning vehicle, not a ravine. Biden was also giving him a Bronze Star, not a Silver Star. Separately, Biden reportedly watched a soldier who rescued a comrade receive a Bronze Star when he visited Kunar as a senator.
The Post concluded that Biden seems to have combined elements of three true stories into one false one. He frequently changes the details, but the Post writes that last week, "in the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony."
