Who Is “Cowboy Hero” Carlos Arredondo?

Some argue that he is “the most interesting man in the world”:

This dude has been around the block, has he not? I mean he has been featured in many news articles going back to 2004. He caught himself on fire, for Christ’s sake.

“My husband almost killed himself in grief,” his wife says. “The day [the Marines] came to tell us Alex was dead, he poured gasoline all over himself and all over the inside of [their] car and lit it on fire. He survived … physically.” ~ Mélida Arredondo

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1946410,00.html#ixzz2RcG47Tkz

He is an anti-war protestor that waves American flags, honoring soldiers (seems like a disconnect of sorts to me). He has ties to Ted Kennedy. He has been featured in videos and numerous articles on the web. Also, illuminated with one sentence from Wikipedia is this nugget:

Arredondo and his wife Melida both spent time as inpatient psychiatric patients.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Arredondo#cite_note-10

Just as DC Dave and I pointed out in yesterday’s post about Bruce Mendelshon’s many interviews and seeming hero focus, this guy also has been featured in the same way. And now he is being touted as a hero. But what if he was acting? What if the guy in the wheelchair is a fake? Wouldn’t that make Carlos some sort of fake, as well?

Here is the problem I have with Cowboy’s story. It don’t really add up time-wise, nor by his actions, as James at the Memory Hole Blog explains in this fabulously illuminating post called The Unlikely Antics of Boston’s “Cowboy Hero”:

The photos taken that day of the overall scene and Arredondo’s activities therein suggest that he went about his purported heroic exploits in a much more time-consuming–and perhaps somewhat less noble–fashion.

Arredondo can be seen here on the left waiting by the fence before donning his hat and springing into action as the wounded lay before him. Bauman appears to be behind the black woman dressed in dark pants, white shirt and red jacket

Rather than rushing to assist the man who allegedly lost both his legs, as we are told he “instinctively” did by the Washington Post, Arredondo now pauses here to attend to the fencing.
The official casualty count of 264 injured cannot be readily demonstrated in these photos, unless perhaps a far greater percentage of casualties could be evidenced where the second bomb detonated further down Boylston Street and away from the finish line.

Here is another shot of Arredondo still far more preoccupied with the fencing and scaffolding than the injured and maimed.

With the fence finally dismantled Boston’s “Cowboy Hero” now has his back entirely turned away from the fallen.

Arredondo the Boston Cowboy Hero is seen here continuing to wrestle with the scaffolding.

As Arredondo assists with the fencing, a severely maimed Jeff Bauman is left unaided on the ground.

Arredondo the Cowboy Hero now appears to be leaning against the scaffold framework and possibly partaking in another slight breather.

Meanwhile no one is assisting the severely injured Jeff Bauman.

Army Reservists are among those who appear to assist Arredondo the Cowboy Hero in his struggle with the scaffolding, while the injured and maimed continue to be left unattended.

Here the fencing and scaffolding are wholly removed. Yet Arredondo has still not proceeded to assist Mr. Bauman. Further, while the entire area is swarming with uniformed emergency medical personnel, the would-be severely injured and traumatized Bauman is left unattended.
A high resolution version of the photo above shows the precise time on the overhead timers for the marathon (over the road) as 4:12:06. This is 2 minutes and 23 seconds after the blast (timer reading 4:09:43 at time of blast). This is a very long time for the many bombing victims with reportedly lost limbs and devastating shrapnel wounds to be left unattended while potential responders who have been presented as unyielding and chivalrous defenders of the massacred struggle with fencing.

The series of photos suggests how it will be several more minutes before Bauman is taken to the ambulance. Why is it that proper medical personnel in the interim didn’t attend to the grievously wounded man? Perhaps this is nothing a dramatic photo shoot couldn’t take care of.

Boston’s Cowboy Hero Arredondo adjusts his hat as he finally locates and rescues Jeff Bauman, prior to accompanying him in the wheelchair.

The last photo which shows the timers is where they are being removed (why?). The time shown is 4:14:26 which is close to five minutes after the blast. In this photo Arredondo may be seen bending over where the injured lay, yet he is mostly obscured.

Thus in contrast to mainstream media’s account of Arredondo’s heroism, it appears that five minutes transpired before Boston’s Cowboy Hero escorted Bauman to hospital.

CCTV video capturing Arredondo’s valorous gallop to the ambulance with Bauman suggests that more than one take may have been necessary to produce the desired shots, including one with an awkward interruption midway through after Bauman unexpectedly lost what is left of his lower appendage.

CCTV video indicates at 3:05 that Arredondo escorted Bauman to the waiting ambulance–over six minutes after the ordnance detonated.

And finally a key photograph successfully captured that will strongly imbue the severity of the Boston Marathon bombing into the public mind.

In summary, in spite of there being ample personnel attending to the wounded at the bombing, and despite apparently having both legs blown off, Jeff Bauman was left completely unattended for at least 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

Then, after going so long without attention it is not even medical personnel who attend to him. He is instead in the care of a civilian in a cowboy hat who, after several more minutes, puts him in a wheelchair to wheel him to an ambulance. Why didn’t medical personnel take over at some point in time?

Why didn’t the ambulances go to the actual scene where the injured lay?  If the police vehicles can come and go, then why couldn’t the ambulances?

Is Carlos Arredondo really the hero US news media portray him as? Are such news outlets perhaps perpetuating a misconception? Did Arredondo really jump the fence and rush to assist Bauman? Or was this perhaps a contrived scene where Arredondo fulfilled a particular predetermined role? Was the apparently maimed man who would later play a key role in identifying the Tsarnaev brothers as the alleged evil culprits deliberately left unattended for a photo shoot? Why otherwise would Bauman be ignored by everyone including his valiant rescuer for so long?

Moreover, why have the major and even certain alternative media failed to forthrightly examine what appears to be an increasingly curious and implausible event?

h/t NODISINFO and The Memory Hole Blog (this is a fantastic post with notes you can follow to confirm for yourself… thanks, James F. Tracy and Andrew Whooley)

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2013-04-26 23:45:04

Source: https://buelahman.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/who-is-cowboy-hero-carlos-arredondo/