Kike Sailor LIES About Being On the USS Cole!

KIKE POS Sailor Fabricates Cole Attack


December 05, 2009
The Virginian-Pilot

http://www.military.com/news/article/sailor-fabricates-cole-attack.html?ESRC=nav\
y.nl

In early November, retired Senior Chief Jeffrey Sparenberg was the guest of
honor at military heritage day in Delaware.
Sparenberg spent 23 years in the Navy, including time on the destroyer Cole, and
he was at Fort DuPont State Park that day to donate a flag that he said flew
over the Cole shortly after it was attacked nine years ago.
The flag, he hoped, would be put on view at the planned Delaware Military
Museum.
A photograph from the ceremony shows Sparenberg on the steps of a shuttered
brick building. The left side of his chest is covered with military medals --
including a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, purportedly from the actions he took
and the injuries he suffered in that lunchtime attack.
Seventeen sailors died in the suicide bombing on Oct. 12, 2000, during a
refueling stop in Aden, Yemen.
Sparenberg's detailed account of that fateful day was published on Nov. 16 in a
front-page story in The News Journal of Wilmington, Del.
Now Sparenberg is back in the spotlight: The Navy and the ship's former
commander say he was not on the Norfolk-based ship at all on the day it was
struck.
They don't know whether the flag he donated actually flew aboard the Cole. And
the two most significant medals he wore to the Delaware ceremony are also in
doubt.
Lt. John Daniels, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, said Sparenberg's orders for
the Cole show him joining the ship on Oct. 16, 2000 -- four days after the
bombing.
Retired Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, the Cole's skipper at the time, said he distinctly
remembers being told after the attack that a new crew member was in Bahrain,
waiting to join the ship.
Someone back in the States asked whether they should send the sailor back to the
U.S., but Lippold -- who'd just lost 17 crew members, including a senior chief
-- knew he could use more help. He gave approval for Sparenberg to join the
crew.
"During the time he was on board the ship following the attack, he did an
excellent job in helping the ship through some difficult times," Lippold said.
However, he added, "I know for a fact he wasn't aboard the day of the attack."
The News Journal has removed the original story from its Web site and says it
will set the record straight after the Navy finishes looking into the matter.
Daniels said he wasn't sure how long that would take.
According to his personnel record, Daniels said, Sparenberg is not entitled to
wear the Bronze Star or Purple Heart. The highest honor he earned in the Navy is
a Meritorious Service Medal, shown to the right of the two combat honors in the
photo.
"He was not in the line of fire on Oct. 12," Daniels said. "Him making any
claims to being injured in the terrorist act on the USS Cole are not plausible."
Contacted on Thursday by The Virginian-Pilot, Sparenberg did not directly answer
questions about when he arrived on the Cole or whether he wore medals he did not
earn.
"I served on the Cole. I was with some of the greatest American heroes I know,"
said Sparenberg, who lives in Delaware.
He said he was trying to make sure the ship's crew was remembered and now has
come under attack.
"I'm not going to say anything. I have no reason to say anything. I have no
reason to prove anything," he said in response to a question about the medals.
Sparenberg said reliving the Cole attack is painful, and that he sometimes cries
at night "thinking about what I had to do."
"I want this part of my life to go away," he said.
Lorrie Triplett might wish the same.
Triplett, who lives in Suffolk, lost her husband -- Ensign Andrew Triplett -- in
the Cole attack. In the nine years since, she's raised their two daughters to be
proud of their father's service.
In the Delaware newspaper article, Sparenberg talked in detail about working
beside Triplett in the ship's fuels lab in the minutes before the blast. He
described how Triplett told him to go to lunch -- even mentioned the main entree
that day in the galley -- and how, seconds after he departed the lab, the
detonation rocked the ship. Triplett died; Sparenberg lived.
Lorrie Triplett said Thursday she has never heard of Sparenberg. She's talked at
length with two enlisted sailors who were in the fuels lab with her husband that
morning, and through their accounts, she pieced together an idea of what her
husband's final moments were like.
It's unsettling to her that someone the Navy said wasn't yet aboard the ship is
now claiming a part in the narrative.
"It's like tampering with what happened," Triplett said.
"Why would you want to fabricate something to this extent for that event? Why
would you want to say you were there at a tragedy?"