Sailor pretended to be ARW member and died in battle

cruasder777

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/a-dead-lover-walking-us-woman-conned-by-irish-army-ranger-484685.html



AMERICAN woman Pamela Olson was so devastated when told that her Irish lover had been killed while saving a child during a gun battle in Iraq that she set up a web page to honour her fallen hero.

Friends from all over the world were heartbroken at her news. They wrote messages of support and pledged to help Ms Olson through her loss. Some reminded her of his sacrifice for Iraqi freedom.

But now she has been told her dead hero is not only actually alive and well, but apparently married and living happily in Cork. He is also not in fact an elite soldier, but a humble Irish sailor serving aboard a navy ship.

And in revenge at his apparent Walter Mitty stories, the pretty but credulous 24-year-old Oklahoma student has told the whole story on the internet, accusing her former beau of being a fantasist.

She says she was furious when she learned that the 25-year-old Corkman was not an Army Ranger, didn't play rugby for Munster, never drove a Harley Davidson across Russia, nor served with gallantry in war-torn East Timor and the Lebanon.

In fact the man, from East Cork - and whose identity is known to the Sunday Independent - was an ordinary sailor with the Irish navy who allegedly created a heroic and often hilarious Action Man persona, nicknamed "Neo" after the character played by Keanu Reeves in the action blockbuster The Matrix.

He may have meant no harm, but Ms Olson is now full of bitterness and scorn for her former lover - whom she has lashed on the website that once honoured him.

She told the Sunday Independent: "I felt I was in love with him and was devastated when I heard by email that he had been killed. I was furious when I realised it was all one great big lie." She added, "I was hurt when I found out the truth."

The Corkman's (Neo's) tales of derring-do had impressed the naive Ms Olson, whom he met while on holiday in Croatia in 2002. At the time he was a single man.

whydave

BURN !!!!

Morlar

In all fairness she must have been incredibly stupid to have believed half of that shíte.

From reading that it looks like he was trying to get his end away rather than setting out to genuinely decieve people.

neilled

Morlar wrote: »

In all fairness she must have been incredibly stupid to have believed half of that shíte.

From reading that it looks like he was trying to get his end away rather than setting out to genuinely decieve people.

Pretty much. Its also done the rounds, - fairly old story.

Tombo2001

What this guy did was really appalling.

Its totally wrong to say its her fault for being stupid. Nobody deserves to be lied to in that way.

There is a view afoot in Ireland that Americans are stupid. The people who brought us the internet, electricity and space travel are stupid.

They are not stupid, but what they are in contrast to us, is upfront and honest.

Their natural default position is not to be entering every conversation expecting the piss to be taken.....which is often the case here.

If taken at face value, she was put through a lot of heartache for absolutely nothing except presumably for a few people in Cork to get a laugh at her.

goldie fish

Welcome to 2004.

Jogathon

I feel sorry for the guy. She's seems like a complete loon. And imagine being so thick to believe that an Irish Naval officer was in a gunfight, nowhere near an ocean, in Iraq. Imagine not knowing who your countries allies are in a foreign war. From the sounds of it, he thought that the only way to get rid of her permanently was to tell her that he had died. Bunny boiler - and he just wanted to get her into bed.

tac foley

Tombo2001 wrote: »

There is a view afoot in Ireland that Americans are stupid. The people who brought us the internet, electricity and space travel are stupid.

I realise that a lot of you over there might be astounded to learn that the 'ould enemy' actually did anything good on this planet, but the internet was invented by an Englishman, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

And electricity was another British idea, but to save you any angst, I'll let you use electricity to check out the British-invented internet on that one.

tac

Donny5

tac foley wrote: »

I realise that a lot of you over there might be astounded to learn that the 'ould enemy' actually did anything good on this planet, but the internet was invented by an Englishman, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Tac, that's utter bull****. The web, characterised by hypertext, was certainly invented by TBL, and he's a hero for it, but http/the web isn't the internet. The internet is strictly an American invention, a product of DARPA. I'm sorry to say that you've been caught up to your arse in bull****.

maddragon

Silly woman.

MrGeneric

Donny5 wrote: »

Tac, that's utter bull****. The web, characterised by hypertext, was certainly invented by TBL, and he's a hero for it, but http/the web isn't the internet. The internet is strictly an American invention, a product of DARPA. I'm sorry to say that you've been caught up to your arse in bull****.

A product of the predecessor to DARPA.

tac foley

Donny5 wrote: »

Tac, that's utter bull****. The web, characterised by hypertext, was certainly invented by TBL, and he's a hero for it, but http/the web isn't the internet. The internet is strictly an American invention, a product of DARPA. I'm sorry to say that you've been caught up to your arse in bull****.

Ah, thank you, Sir, for putting me right in such a diplomatic and gentlemanly manner.

It's indeed good to know that there are such polite and helpful people out there.

tac

cruasder777

maddragon wrote: »

Silly woman.

So the woman is responsible ?:rolleyes:

cruasder777

Jogathon wrote: »

I feel sorry for the guy. She's seems like a complete loon. And imagine being so thick to believe that an Irish Naval officer was in a gunfight, nowhere near an ocean, in Iraq. Imagine not knowing who your countries allies are in a foreign war. From the sounds of it, he thought that the only way to get rid of her permanently was to tell her that he had died. Bunny boiler - and he just wanted to get her into bed.

"However, it's understood the Defence Forces are set to regard the embarrassing claims as a strictly private matter - and the man is unlikely to face any form of military inquiry."



The guy should have been on a serious charge, he brought the defence forces into serious disrepute, as well as acting as an imposter.


Most woman dont understand military things.

Lemming

tac foley wrote: »

Ah, thank you, Sir, for putting me right in such a diplomatic and gentlemanly manner.

It's indeed good to know that there are such polite and helpful people out there.

tac

Tac,

Sir Tim developed the HTTP protocol from which the "World Wide Web" as we know it now exists. To say he is a major figurehead is an understatement, and in the strictest sense, yes he "created the internet". But in a wider context, he developed a protocol which sits on top of lower level protocols designed to govern the transfer of data "on the wire" so to speak.

In the late 1950s, the US DoD founded the Advanced Research Project Agency, aka ARPA net, although it was purely focused on research as opposed to developing specific military products. It was here that the concept of the "packet switching network" was developed, with messages broken down into fixed size "packets" of data to be reassembled at their destination with each packet capable of travelling independent of the others. This design allowed for communications across US installations in the event of nuclear strikes whereby data could simply re-route itself around destroyed telecommunications infrastructure.

From all of the above came the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, followed some years later by the Internet Protocol, or IP, which combine to create the TCP/IP 'stack' on which almost all network communications are based. Keeping it all as simple as I can, data packets contain two elements: a header (with various command & control flags) and a body which is the data payload. TCP packet headers contain detailed information regarding the command & control of payload and whilst ideal for localised network traffic, are inefficient when trying to bounce packets across half a continent because they take longer to interrogate by intermediaries, hence where the more streamlined IP packet comes into play. The IP header has fewer command & control elements, to allow for rapid interrogation and desired relay/routing onwards to its eventual destination. IP packets basically contain a source address, a destination address, a couple of house-keeping control flags,and the TCP packet payload. Once an IP packet reaches its destination, the TCP packet is unwrapped & then inspected in greater detail. The general order of how it all hangs together is as follows:

Wire -> Data Link layer (i.e. adapter, circuit board, etc.) -> IP -> TCP -> Protocol (e.g. HTTP/FTP/etc.) -> User Application and vice versa back down the 'stack'.

My knowledge of time-lines is a bit fuzzy other than the order in which events appeared above so I'll not add dates. ARPA net became DARPA net as it's known today.

With apologies for the off-topic nature of the post, any inaccuracies contained within (it's late and I've been at the beer supply), or any "WTF is he on about?!" moments.

Jogathon

cruasder777 wrote: »

"However, it's understood the Defence Forces are set to regard the embarrassing claims as a strictly private matter - and the man is unlikely to face any form of military inquiry."



The guy should have been on a serious charge, he brought the defence forces into serious disrepute, as well as acting as an imposter.


Most woman dont understand military things.

I'm a woman and sometimes I understand things that have bombs and guns and stuff.

cruasder777

Jogathon wrote: »

I'm a woman and sometimes I understand things that have bombs and guns and stuff.

I know two women who have come across similar Walter Mittys, one claimed he was in UK special forces and deployed to Iraq via submarine every month, but could not talk about it as he was under the official secrets act.

The other, that the little scar on his chin was because he was shot in Afghanistan. Theres a hell of alot of them about.

the_syco

I'm pretty sure Alessandro Volta found electricity.

And us Irish designed the first subs and tanks.

Tombo2001

tac foley wrote: »

I realise that a lot of you over there might be astounded to learn that the 'ould enemy' actually did anything good on this planet, but the internet was invented by an Englishman, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

And electricity was another British idea, but to save you any angst, I'll let you use electricity to check out the British-invented internet on that one.

tac

the olympics opening ceremony was great, wasnt it.....

Jogathon

cruasder777 wrote: »

I know two women who have come across similar Walter Mittys, one claimed he was in UK special forces and deployed to Iraq via submarine every month, but could not talk about it as he was under the official secrets act.

The other, that the little scar on his chin was because he was shot in Afghanistan. Theres a hell of alot of them about.

Yeah, I've come across them too - more common than you'd think! But that's why I'm saying the girl must be completely nuts and gullible. Wake up girlie! How could she have believed it in the first place?

Tombo2001

Jogathon wrote: »

Yeah, I've come across them too - more common than you'd think! But that's why I'm saying the girl must be completely nuts and gullible. Wake up girlie! How could she have believed it in the first place?

Yeah, who would ever believe that a person was a soldier fighting in Iraq at a time when the country you live in was at war in Iraq........what was she thinking......

Eggy Baby!

There is a view afoot in Ireland that Americans are stupid. The people who brought us the internet, electricity and space travel are stupid.

Internet- British invention.

Electricity was brought to us by Americans? Are you kidding me? They brought us protons and neutrons too, I gather? They didn't even pioneer domestic-based electricity.

Space travel- Russians got the first man in space, the first satellite in space, the first woman in space, the first living organism in space, the first space station, were the first to orbit the Earth etc. Rockets were pioneered by the Germans and the US space program depended a lot on German scientists that had been captured.

The Americans invented a lot of stuff but claiming that Americans aren't stupid and then citing things which they didn't invent as evidence doesn't give the right impression :rolleyes:

Donny5

Eggy Baby! wrote: »

Internet- British invention.

The internet is American, a DARPA project. The web was British - well, made by a Brit at CERN.

Eggy Baby! wrote: »

Electricity was brought to us by Americans? Are you kidding me? They brought us protons and neutrons too, I gather? They didn't even pioneer domestic-based electricity.

This one is harder to pin down, but the general understanding of one electrical force was discovered by Benjamin Franklin. There are lots of others from around the world involved in the various discovers about what we know about electricity. The Yanks did beat the world to electrication, though, with the first large scale generation and distribution network

Jogathon

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Yeah, who would ever believe that a person was a soldier fighting in Iraq at a time when the country you live in was at war in Iraq........what was she thinking......

Because he told her that he was in the Irish Navy. Irish - not at war in Iraq, Navy - not generally involved in gunfights. Girl must be dim, or else patently oblivious to any world politics.

Cardinal Richelieu

Is this story a piss take?

http://www.pamolson.org/Me.htm

I was born in Tulsa, OK and grew up in Stigler, a small town in eastern Oklahoma. I went to the Oklahoma School of Science and Math (public boarding school in Oklahoma City) for the last two years of high school then moved to California to study physics and political science at Stanford.
I graduated in 2002 and wandered around bartending and traveling for a couple of years until I landed in Palestine. I lived in Ramallah for a year and a half and had an amazing time working as a journalist, doing foreign press coordination for a presidential candidate, traveling, and writing a blog called Letters from Palestine.

In January 2006 I moved to Washington, DC and worked at a Defense think tank in the belly of the Bush Beltway to find out what I could learn and teach. After nearly two years in DC, I moved back to Ramallah and started writing a book called Fast Times in Palestine. Its aim is to bring a sophisticated understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict to ordinary Americans through an engaging, well-researched narrative full of suspense, humor, beauty, terror, and romance

The site dedicated to him still exists
http://www.pamolson.org/Ronan.htm
Warning: It reads like a very bad Mills and Boon. The CIA should read extracts to prisoners instead of water boarding.

Ronan said they were coming to the States because Irish soldiers had stopped some vandals from sabotaging American military equipment at Shannon Airport. The saboteurs were trying to protest the Iraq war. Public pressure in Europe against the war was immense from the start.

In exchange for protecting their equipment, America invited a shipload of Irish sailors to march in a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah, GA, and then rig up the ship for schmoozy cocktail parties in Miami, probably to show how strong international support for the Iraq War was.

walked across a long bridge to the port and wandered past several cruise line offices until I found a friendly policewoman who pointed me in the right direction.

As I walked around the building closest to Terminal 12, the 87-meter warship, the L.E. Roisin, a grey floating fortress, slowly came into view. The last part of her I saw was the green, white, and orange Irish flag waving proudly off her stern, and my heart swelled.

Morlar

Cardinal Richelieu wrote: »

Is this story a piss take?

http://www.pamolson.org/Me.htm


The site dedicated to him still exists
http://www.pamolson.org/Ronan.htm
Warning: It reads like a very bad Mills and Boon. The CIA should read extracts to prisoners instead of water boarding.

The last comment on this page was quite funny I thought :

http://www.pamolson.org/Ronan11.htm

mawk

this story is close to my heart..

an ex of mine that I was still friendly with went out with the guy too. at some point she googled him and found the story. * bricks were passed*
when she asked him about it he wigged out propper style, and that fairly ended that.

I always thought it was hilarious.
obviously she didn't.

clancyboy

Not to mention his wife through him out. If he didnt panic and get someone to contact her that he was killed he would never have been found out. Alot of navy in foreign ports tell lies like this, its just this fella was ended up in the worst case scenario

100gSoma

I'm actually LOL here. Great Friday reading. Hard to hate the guy. comedy gold. Your whan tells it well.

I showed up at 7:00 the next day… actually, I showed up around 7:20. I was playing it cool. So, apparently, was he. I found a stand outside the bar selling skirts and hats and pretended to be interested in them while I waited.

He came around the corner practically at a run at a quarter ’til eight.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” he said. “Jesus, that was just about the most stressful hour of my life.”

“What happened?”

“Border guards in some f*ck-off country phoned and said they were trying to take apart my Harley.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, to search for smuggled goods or weapons or something.” He sounded like someone was trying to dismember his child. “We went back and forth for about forty-five minutes, and finally I said, ‘Look, do you have a large screwdriver handy?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Good. Turn it around the insert it directly up your ass, because you are not taking apart my Harley.’”

I laughed. “Did it work?”

“Yeah, you know, I had some military connections. I got it cleared through official channels. It’s all right now.”

Oink

Jogathon wrote: »

I'm a woman and sometimes I understand things that have bombs and guns and stuff.

:eek: getattahere! A wimenz on the internet!11!

claypigeon777

Tombo2001 wrote: »

What this guy did was really appalling.

Its totally wrong to say its her fault for being stupid. Nobody deserves to be lied to in that way.

There is a view afoot in Ireland that Americans are stupid. The people who brought us the internet, electricity and space travel are stupid.

They are not stupid, but what they are in contrast to us, is upfront and honest.

Their natural default position is not to be entering every conversation expecting the piss to be taken.....which is often the case here.

If taken at face value, she was put through a lot of heartache for absolutely nothing except presumably for a few people in Cork to get a laugh at her.

Maybe he should have told her was he was a dentist or a doctor.

He got his hole! Give him a pat on the back for goodness sake!:D

The Diabolical Monocle

What a douche.