Blue Falcon
at the VA Gate
A veteran got his rating, took the benefit, and then appointed himself judge of everybody waiting behind him.
This is a direct response to Geoffrey Ingersoll’s Daily Caller opinion column, “We Badly Need To Address The 100% Disabled Veteran Bullsh*tters.” Read his argument in full. He should get the benefit of his own words before I tear them apart.
Who in the hell made Geoffrey Ingersoll God, a VA rater, and a medical expert at the same time?
Ingersoll says VA disability is “rife with bullshitters.” He says reform is necessary or the Department of Defense will bankrupt itself, even though VA disability compensation is administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Then he delivers the policy recommendation hiding underneath the outrage:
“Sorry to say, but the door needs to be shut on future claims.”— Geoffrey Ingersoll, Daily Caller
No. Fraud should be investigated. Claims mills should be shut down. Actual fraudsters should be prosecuted.
But closing the door on future veterans is not reform. It is a disabled veteran standing safely inside the system and volunteering to lock it behind him.
The military is full of ribbing. Branch against branch. Rate against rate. Infantry against anybody who has ever slept indoors.
Fine. Most of it is harmless.
But there is another rule, usually left unspoken: you do not presume to know another veteran’s entire service from a job title.
Not because everyone had the same experience. They did not.
Because you do not fucking know.
A DD-214 is not an MRI. An MOS is not a psychiatric evaluation. A deployment patch is not a disability rating. You know what somebody did on an organizational chart. You do not know what happened there, what happened afterward, or what followed them home.
“You don’t know what is in another veteran’s service record. You sure as hell don’t know what is in the medical record.”— Stay in your lane
The minute Ingersoll wrote that one man “was a cook receiving $4,000 a month for hearing loss,” the game was obvious. We were supposed to hear the job title and conclude the veteran could not possibly have been badly injured.
How the hell would Ingersoll know?
Maybe that cook worked on a base taking indirect fire. Maybe he drove convoys. Maybe he hauled equipment until his back came apart. Maybe he lived around generators, aircraft, weapons fire, or industrial noise. Maybe he survived a training accident. Maybe he was assaulted. Maybe he watched somebody die.
Maybe none of that happened.
That is the point.
I do not know. Ingersoll does not know. The audience does not know. A military occupation is not medical evidence.
If you have not seen the records, examined the veteran, or reviewed the claim file, you are not exposing fraud. You are guessing about somebody else’s wounds.
Ingersoll says the VA denied every physical claim he filed. Fair enough.
Why?
He never tells us what the decision letters said. Any competent Veterans Service Officer starts with the same basic elements of direct service connection:
- A current physical or mental disability
- An in-service event, injury, illness, or exposure
- Evidence connecting the current condition to what happened in service
That third element is commonly called the nexus. It can come from treatment records, a VA examination, a qualified medical opinion, applicable presumptions, or other competent evidence.
So what failed in his physical claims? Was there no current diagnosis? No documented in-service event? No evidence of chronic symptoms? No persuasive medical connection? Did VA simply get it wrong?
We cannot know because he does not tell us.
Maybe the VA wronged him. It happens. Maybe he lacked one of the required elements. That happens too. What he cannot honestly do is turn unexplained denials from his own file into proof that somebody else’s approved claim is fraudulent.
“You demand context for your own claims while denying it to everyone else’s.”— Evidence for me, assumptions for everybody else
There is a real scandal in the disability world. It is not “a cook got benefits.”
It is the cottage industry selling veterans expensive coaching packages, canned medical opinions, questionable disability-benefit questionnaires, and implied guarantees of a 100 percent rating. Some of these operations charge thousands of dollars for work accredited VSOs perform without charging the veteran.
Investigate them. Audit boilerplate opinions. Prosecute fraud. Regulate predatory middlemen. Shut down anyone manufacturing evidence.
But keep one distinction straight: a legitimate nexus opinion from a qualified clinician is not a scam. It can be essential when a medical connection is complicated or VA overlooked the evidence.
The scam is not the existence of medical opinions. The scam is selling certainty where the evidence does not support it.
Every unit had one.
The barracks lawyer.
The jackass who knew the UCMJ better than the JAG officers, understood every regulation better than the command, and could explain with absolute confidence why your punishment, promotion, divorce, security clearance, and tax return were all being handled illegally.
Always confident. Frequently wrong.
Ingersoll has become the VA version of that guy.
He watches a Caleb Hammer clip, hears that somebody was a cook, sees none of the medical records, and starts handing down verdicts from the smoke pit.
That is not medical analysis. It is not serious journalism. It is barracks lawyering with somebody else’s disability file.
Ingersoll says VA denied his physical claims but granted 70 percent for PTSD. He then treats other veterans receiving 100 percent as self-evidently suspicious.
That is not how VA math works.
Ratings are not added like ordinary numbers. VA calculates what remains of the “whole person.” A 70 percent rating combined with another 50 percent rating produces 85 percent, which rounds to 90. It does not produce 120, and it does not produce 100.
A veteran starting at 70 percent generally needs several serious additional conditions, or another combined disability burden approaching 90 percent, to reach a schedular 100 percent rating. Alternatively, a veteran may qualify for 100 percent for one profoundly disabling condition or be paid at the 100 percent rate through individual unemployability when service-connected conditions prevent substantially gainful employment.
In plain English: somebody saying “I am 100 percent” tells you almost nothing about the medical architecture underneath that number.
By his own account, Ingersoll received a 70 percent PTSD rating. He accepted the compensation. He used his service-connected status to avoid the VA home-loan funding fee.
Good.
If the evidence supported his claim, then he earned the benefit. I am not going to diagnose him from an opinion column because that would make me the same kind of asshole.
But after walking through the door himself, he wants it shut on future veterans.
His own story is not one of a VA rubber-stamping everything. It is a story of multiple denials followed by one substantial award. Somehow the villain becomes other veterans instead of the evidence, the decision letters, or the agency that denied him.
If VA denied his physical claims unfairly, he should appeal. Fight the VA. Keep fighting. But do not redirect that frustration toward veterans he has never met.
The Navy and Marine Corps teach the same three core values.
Not because every veteran is honest. Not because fraud never happens. Because every veteran deserves the same evidentiary standard Ingersoll demanded for himself.
He asks Americans to distrust veterans he has never met based on medical files he has never seen.
That does not sound like Honor. It does not require Courage. And it sure as hell is not Commitment.
Every one of us signed a blank check to the United States. None of us signed one to Geoffrey Ingersoll.
For twenty years, politicians sent a volunteer force into Afghanistan and Iraq while most Americans went shopping.
They deployed people repeatedly. They exposed them to blasts, toxic smoke, aircraft noise, vehicle wrecks, damaged joints, traumatic brain injuries, sexual violence, traumatic loss, and years of accumulated strain.
Now the bill is arriving.
VA compensation is not a welfare program that appeared out of nowhere. It is part of the cost of military service and part of the deferred cost of war.
You do not get to support the wars, praise the troops, and then act astonished that some of those troops came home damaged.
A service member who protects himself, advances himself, or wins approval by throwing the people beside him under the bus.
The original phrase: buddy fucker.I am not using that phrase because Ingersoll criticized the VA. The VA deserves criticism. I am using it because he invites the public to distrust fellow veterans whose evidence he has never seen, after taking full advantage of the evidentiary process for himself.
That rhetoric will not remain neatly aimed at fraudsters. It becomes the excuse for narrower eligibility, harder claims, fewer examiners, more denials, and another generation of veterans being told their injuries do not count correctly.
A buddy fucker gets his own benefit, then helps close the door behind him.
Fraud exists. Investigate it. Prosecute it. Shut down predatory claims mills. But stop pretending an MOS is a diagnosis, a podcast is a claim file, or an opinion columnist is qualified to play God with another veteran’s medical record.
Trust, but Verify
I do not know whether the cook Ingersoll mentioned deserved 100 percent.
Neither does he.
The difference is that I am willing to admit it.
Evidence first. Conclusions second. That is how investigations work. That is how the VA claims process is supposed to work. Geoffrey Ingersoll flipped them around.
Every veteran deserves the same thing I would demand for myself: evidence, not assumptions.
That used to be called humility. In the military, it was also called staying in your fucking lane.
Source notes: Read Ingersoll’s original Daily Caller column. VA explains the evidence generally needed for service connection on its Evidence Needed for Your Disability Claim page. VA explains combined-rating calculations on About Disability Ratings. VA explains funding-fee exemptions on its Funding Fee and Loan Closing Costs page.
