The Iron Circle: The True Life Story of Dominiquie Vandenberg Dominiquie Vandenberg

Reader's Review: The Obtuse Square: The Life Story of Dominiquie Vandenberg, A Legend in His Own Mind

When I started reading this book, I liked it. That I admit. But as I read more, and as I found contradictions and impossibilities, my initial view of this work turned from enjoyment to disappointment to downright skepticism and anger.

This book contains a lot of adventure, mayhem and martial arts, all right. And therein lies the problem: This book has too much of these things to be believable. Perhaps instead of being titled "The Iron Circle: The True Life Story of Dominiquie Vandenberg", the book should be titled "The Obtuse Square: The Life Story of Dominiquie Vandenberg, a Legend in His Own Mind".

Like Frank Dux, who fails to provide tangible evidence of his alleged activities as a U.S. Marine (he served just six months, if that and if at all), as a CIA operative (Dux claims to have worked personally with the late CIA Director William J. Casey, but the key piece of evidence linking the two somehow falls into a large body of water because of Dux's clumsiness, which seems to contradict the finesse needed/required by someone who claims to be an advanced martial artist) and as a ninja (Dux claims to have studied under a Japanese master of whom no record exists), Dominiquie Vandenberg fails to provide tangible evidence about his adventures and background.

In other words, I have problems with Dominiquie Vandenberg's self-aggrandizing/hagiographic autobiography for a number of reasons:

*Dominiquie Vandenberg claims to have studied an Okinawan art called kunto; there is a martial art called kuntao, but this is an Indonesian-Malaysian-Chinese martial art, not an Okinawan art; I have not been able to find anything about Okinawan kunto and any requisite six-month training program in Okinawa.
*In regards to the above point, Dominiquie Vandenberg claims to have undergone a six-month period of brutal training in Okinawa, an assertion I call pure BS because no human body can sustain the level of brutality and sleep deprivation (among other things) that Dominiquie Vandenberg claims he endured; take Navy SEAL BUD/s training, for instance; men a lot tougher than Dominiquie Vandenberg have dropped out of BUD/s training, which certainly doesn't last six months; and if these men, who are a lot tougher than Dominiquie Vandenberg, couldn't hack BUD/s training, I don't see how Dominiquie Vandenberg could survive, for six months, the level of brutality he claims he endured in Okinawa; I'm repeating the point here, and I'm doing so because "The Iron Circle" is full of implausible claims like this one.
*Dominiquie Vandenberg claims to have been a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion (FFL); well and good, but please provide documentation (a photocopy of the discharge certificate the FFL gives to each legionnaire who honorably departs the FFL, etc.) about this, among other things regarding his alleged service in the FFL. (He has a photograph or two of himself in FFL uniform, but aren't uniforms easy to obtain? I could pose as a FFL paratrooper and claimed I served in Corsica and Djibouti, as Vandenberg seems to have done here.)
*Dominiquie Vandenberg claims that while serving the FFL in a five-year tour, he got a two-week leave and went to Thailand to fight; pardon me for my disbelief here, but I definitely do not believe this at all; the FFL DOES NOT allow soldiers doing a first tour to take extended leave. (Cf. the work of Evan McGorman, a Canadian who did serve in the FFL, and who has written a book about his experiences in the FFL. McGorman portrays life in the FFL as it truly is: laborious in a janitorial sort of way, primitive and highly uninspiring.) The life of a FFL soldier is highly regimented, in other words, and does not allow for the leeway Dominiquie Vandenberg describes in this book.
*Another point regarding Dominiquie Vandenberg's claim that he served in the FFL: Dominiquie Vandenberg claims that he suffered severe leg/hip damage in an accident; if so, and if he had the surgery he claims he had, then there is simply no way that Dominiquie Vandenberg would be able to do the physical training required of a legionnaire; imagine a young man, perhaps once athletic, having a hip replacement; and then imagine that young man attempting to do the physical work required of a U.S. Marine; it just ain't happenin'.
*Dominiquie Vandenberg claims that while fighting in Southeast Asia, he killed a mercenary who stepped into the ring after he, Vandenberg, vanquished a kickboxing opponent; the mercenary had three companions in the audience; my question: Can we honestly believe that three sociopathic men (probably all armed to the T with guns, knives and who knows what else) wouldn't have done something to avenge their fallen friend?
*Dominiquie Vandenberg claims that while in Southeast Asia, he met a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who had become a Buddhist monk. (Presumably, this monk was a Theravadic Buddhist; the Thais, the Burmese and Buddhists in southern India and Sri Lanka practice this form of Buddhism.) Dominiquie Vandenberg claims to have undergone a sort of spiritual conversion because of this man (or at least hints at it). Again, what is the monk's name? What form of Buddhism did this monk teach and practice? And the parable that the monk uses to "enlighten" Dominiquie Vandenberg (a parable about a Samurai who encounters a wise Buddhist monk) is a parable that one can find in several martial arts books and magazines; this parable is so clich?d in the Japanese Zen Buddhist community (from which it originates) that I won't even repeat it here. (I find it odd that a Buddhist monk in Thailand or wherever would even quote this parable, which isn't part of the Buddhist traditional canon in Southeast Asia, but as aforementioned, comes from the Japanese Zen Buddhist tradition).
*Regarding the above point about Dominiquie Vandenberg's "spiritual training": If one claims to have undergone a spiritual conversion, or to have trained in the spiritual-meditative ways in which Dominiquie Vandenberg claims he has been trained, one doesn't go around bragging about the number of people one has maimed or killed, as Vandenberg does in this book, and one certainly doesn't go back to Hollywood and partake in films like "Death Row Tournament", "Pit Fighter" and other films that glorify violence; at least that's what Buddhism teaches as part of its eightfold path. (Besides right livelihood -- there's nothing wrong with acting, but Buddhism would argue that acting in films that glorify violence is wrong -- another Buddhist tenet in the eightfold path is right speech, or telling the truth; I wonder if Dominiquie Vandenberg learned that from his friend the monk.)
*Dominiquie Vandenberg speaks of a Thai opponent -- a god-like Muay Thai master -- he vanquishes, without providing the name of this fighter; Vandenberg also says that this Muay Thai fighter fought once a month for several years; excuse me, but as someone who has trained in Muay Thai, I can tell you, the ring life of a Muay Thai fighter lasts three to four years at the most; imagine a heavyweight boxer fighting a full-out, 15-round match a month, month-in, month-out, for several years; the fighter would be so punch-drunk and loopy (if not dead), it wouldn't be funny. Yet Vandenberg claims that this particular Muay Thai fighter did this kind of fighting for years on end. (Cf. the writings of Bill "Superfoot" Wallace for further information on the realities of Muay Thai and life in the ring.)

I find this work disturbing because of its glorification of violence; like his countryman Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dominiquie Vandenberg seems to be another phony Hollywood tough attempting to impress one and all with a mostly imagined past.

The Iron Circle: The True Life Story of Dominiquie Vandenberg

by Dominiquie Vandenberg