Tillman dies in Afghanistan

[blike]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040423/D824KL5G0.html

 

He was a better man than I.

[Guest gammagoat]

Or my self.

[PerpetualYnquisitive]

Tillman killed by friendly fire

 

 

Pat Tillman

 

Billy House

Republic Washington Bureau

May. 29, 2004 12:00 AM

 

WASHINGTON - Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals football player who died in April while a U.S. soldier fighting in Afghanistan, likely was killed by friendly fire, an Army investigation has concluded.

 

News of that finding was disseminated Friday to some members of Congress and some Tillman family members just as the Memorial Day weekend was to begin, including today's dedication ceremonies in Washington of the World War II Memorial.

 

"It does seem pretty clear that he was killed by friendly fire," said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, which was alerted to the information by the Army's Legislative Liaison Office.

 

 

Full article here:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0529tillman29.html

 

 

Another great oxymoron, Friendly Fire. Ask anyone hit by it if they thought there was anything friendly about it.

[PerpetualYnquisitive]

New inquiry may expose events that led to Pat Tillman’s death

- Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, September 25, 2005

 

The battle between a grieving family and the U.S. military justice system is on display in thousands of pages of documents strewn across Mary Tillman’s dining room table in suburban San Jose.

 

As she pores through testimony from three previous Army investigations into the killing of her son, former football star Pat Tillman, by his fellow Army Rangers last year in Afghanistan, she hopes that a new inquiry launched in August by the Pentagon’s inspector general finally will answer the family’s questions:

 

Were witnesses allowed to change their testimony on key details, as alleged by one investigator? Why did internal documents on the case, such as the initial casualty report, include false information? When did top Pentagon officials know that Tillman’s death was caused by friendly fire, and why did they delay for five weeks before informing his family?

 

“There have been so many discrepancies so far that it’s hard to know what to believe,” Mary Tillman said. “There are too many murky details.” The files the family received from the Army in March are heavily censored, with nearly every page containing blacked-out sections; most names have been deleted. (Names for this story were provided by sources close to the investigation.) At least one volume was withheld altogether from the family, and even an Army press release given to the media has deletions. On her copies, Mary Tillman has added competing marks and scrawls — countless color-coded tabs and angry notes such as “Contradiction!” “Wrong!” and “????”

 

A Chronicle review of more than 2,000 pages of testimony, as well as interviews with Pat Tillman’s family members and soldiers who served with him, found contradictions, inaccuracies and what appears to be the military’s attempt at self-protection.

 

For example, the documents contain testimony of the first investigating officer alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses to change key details in their sworn statements so his finding that certain soldiers committed “gross negligence” could be softened.

 

Full article: http://tinyurl.com/8a4ck

 

“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam” Jensen-Stevenson, 1990, Page 97, citing The Final Days, Woodward and Bernstein (Simon & Schuster, 1976)

 

http://tinyurl.com/9oc27

[PerpetualYnquisitive]

The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman

By Frank Rich

The New York Times

 

Sunday 06 November 2005

 

It would be a compelling story," Patrick Fitzgerald said of the narrative Scooter Libby used to allegedly mislead investigators in the Valerie Wilson leak case, "if only it were true."

 

"Compelling" is higher praise than any Mr. Libby received for his one work of published fiction, a 1996 novel of "murder, passion and heart-stopping chases through the snow" called "The Apprentice." If you read the indictment, you'll see why he merits the critical upgrade. The intricate tale he told the F.B.I. and the grand jury - with its endlessly clever contradictions of his White House colleagues' testimony - is compelling even without the sex and the snow.

 

The medium is the message. This administration just loves to beguile us with a rollicking good story, truth be damned. The propagandistic fable exposed by the leak case - the apocalyptic imminence of Saddam's mushroom clouds - was only the first of its genre. Given that potboiler's huge success at selling the war, its authors couldn't resist providing sequels once we were in Iraq. As the American casualty toll surges past 2,000 and Veterans Day approaches, we need to remember and unmask those scenarios as well. Our troops and their families have too often made the ultimate sacrifice for the official fictions that have corrupted every stage of this war.

 

If there's a tragic example that can serve as representative of the rest, it is surely that of Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals defensive back who famously volunteered for the Army in the spring after 9/11, giving up a $3.6 million N.F.L. contract extension. Tillman wanted to pay something back to his country by pursuing the enemy that actually attacked it, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Instead he was sent to fight a war in Iraq that he didn't see coming when he enlisted because the administration was still hatching it in secret. Only on a second tour of duty was he finally sent into Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, where, on April 22, 2004, he was killed. On April 30, an official Army press release announcing his Silver Star citation filled in vivid details of his last battle. Tillman, it said, was storming a hill to take out the enemy, even as he "personally provided suppressive fire with an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun."

 

It would be a compelling story, if only it were true. Five weeks after Tillman's death, the Army acknowledged abruptly, without providing details, that he had "probably" died from friendly fire. Many months after that, investigative journalists at The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times reported that the Army's initial portrayal of his death had been not only bogus but also possibly a cover-up of something darker. "The records show that Tillman fought bravely and honorably until his last breath," Steve Coll wrote in The Post in December 2004. "They also show that his superiors exaggerated his actions and invented details as they burnished his legend in public, at the same time suppressing details that might tarnish Tillman's commanders."

 

This fall The San Francisco Chronicle uncovered still more details with the help of Tillman's divorced parents, who have each reluctantly gone public after receiving conflicting and heavily censored official reports on three Army investigations that only added to the mysteries surrounding their son's death. (Yet another inquiry is under way.) "The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons," said Patrick Tillman, Pat Tillman's father, who discovered that crucial evidence in the case, including his son's uniform and gear, had been destroyed almost immediately. "This cover-up started within minutes of Pat's death, and it started at high levels."

 

His accusations are far from wild. The Chronicle found that Gen. John Abizaid, the top American officer in Iraq, and others in his command had learned by April 29, 2004, that friendly fire had killed their star recruit. That was the day before the Army released its fictitious press release of Tillman's hillside firefight and four days before a nationally televised memorial service back home enshrined the fake account of his death. Yet Tillman's parents, his widow, his brother (who served in the same platoon) and politicians like John McCain (who spoke at Tillman's memorial) were not told the truth for another month.

Full article: http://tinyurl.com/dec4u

[ecoli]

Jeez, I thought friendly fire was a thing of the past. Shouldn't our superior communication systems take of that?

[Skye]

Bullets have trouble understanding radio signals.

[Pangloss]

The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons

 

Oh yeah, and Frank Rich isn't "using this" at all! Rofl....

 

At least somebody's reading Frank Rich. Poor guy got stuck behind a pay-only firewall at the New York Times. (chuckle)