First published at My Left Wing
For me, it was Olbermann who broke the bad, sad news from the Associated Press. And I know that I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t surprised, knowing how morally-bankrupt, oppressive, lying and craven this Administration is:
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Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.
The doctors _ whose names were blacked out _ said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
Now it only stands to reason how far up the chain of command does this wretched crime go.
I had a bad feeling when this young man with everything to live for as a football pro making gazillions of bucks VOLUNTEERED to go feet first into this quagmire in the making. I knew he was going to die. And I knew that they were going to make his heroism into a public altar to nationalism.
That’s right: nationalism, not patriotism. The extreme, chest-thumping love of country that brings in fresh recruits and blinds people to what death and loss of limb, of friends, and of innocence truly mean.
What I didn’t figure was that his own government was going to fuck him, and then cover up its complicity like Mafia families.
Why? Because he was reading the likes of Noam Chomsky and was going to meet with him after returning from Afghanistan. Because he questioned the war. Because he told soldiers to vote for Kerry.
Because he was going to call BULLSHIT on this war.
Goddamn them ALL to hell: those who were the trigger fingers, and those who ordered it.
The medical examiners’ suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Among other information contained in the documents:
_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop “sniveling.”
_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.
_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman’s death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn’t recall details of his actions.
_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene _ no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.
Naturally, Congress sprang into action:
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the committee’s top-ranking Republican, also pressed for drafts of a speech President Bush made in the weeks before it became publicly known that the former NFL star was killed by his own troops. In the 2004 speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner, Bush didn’t mention how Tillman died.
Someone remind me: was this the dinner where Dubya ran that fucked montage of him looking around the Oval Office for weapons of mass destruction?
The congressmen informed White House counsel Fred Fielding of their intentions in a letter Tuesday. The White House was reviewing the letter, spokesman Trey Bohn said.
[…]
The five former White House officials the committee plans to question are Dan Bartlett, the recently resigned White House counselor and communications czar; Scott McClellan, a former White House press secretary; Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter; John Currin, a former fact-checker on the speechwriting team; and Taylor Gross, another former spokesman.
The seven officers responsible for the cover-up will not face criminal charges. Why not?
The bereaved parents, pursued for comment, refused to be mollified:
Tillman’s mother, Mary, told the Associated Press that the impending punishments were inadequate.
“I’m not satisfied with any of it,” she told the AP in a telephone interview Thursday.
A central issue in the case has been why the Army waited five weeks to tell the family after suspecting Tillman was killed by friendly fire. Tillman’s family believe officials within the Bush administration hid the facts surrounding Tillman’s death to limit public-relations damage.
Yeah, that certainly is part of it, but I’m willing to be convinced that this boy’s death is more than just window-dressing. Call it a feeling after so many months of lying. I’m saying that they could not allow Pat Tillman loose during the 2004 election. A dead hero was much more pliable than a live one.
Don’t end with just these guys’ testimony, Waxman, because the buck may just stop at Cheney’s door again. After Plame, I wouldn’t put it past him.
Update [2007-7-28 1:4:47 by blksista]: AP via BuzzFlash dated last evening had this interesting retake of the seconds before Tillman was shot:
It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O’Neal, who was at Tillman’s side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting “Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!” again and again.
But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.
The chaplain said that O’Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman’s side, “crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God’s not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling …”
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Pat Tillman: Football Star, Military Patriot, and Liberal? ◊ by Connecticut Man1
Pat kept a journal, writing in it regularly
Yet other Tillman family members are less reluctant to show Tillman’s unique character, which was more complex than the public image of a gung-ho patriotic warrior. He started keeping a journal at 16 and continued the practice on the battlefield, writing in it regularly.
His journal was lost immediately after his deathMary Tillman said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.”
“You know, this war is so f– illegal”
“I can see it like a movie screen,” Baer said. “We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, `You know, this war is so f– illegal.’ And we all said, `Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”
Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry.
Classic novels in their down time
Tillman subscribed to the Economist magazine, and a fellow soldier said Tillman created a makeshift base library of classic novels so his platoon mates would have literature to read in their down time. He even brought gourmet coffee to brew for his platoon in the field in Afghanistan.
Baer said Tillman was popular among his fellow soldiers and had no enemies. “The guys who killed Pat were his biggest fans,” he said. “They were really wrecked afterward.” He called Tillman “this amazing positive force who really brought our whole platoon together.
Body armor buried evidence
A soldier who on April 23 burned Tillman’s bullet riddled body armor — which would have been evidence in a friendly-fire investigation — testified that he did so because there was no doubt it was friendly fire that killed Tillman. Two days later, Tillman’s uniform and vest also were burned because they were soaked in blood and considered a biohazard. Tillman’s uniform also was burned.
Did his “biggest fans” burn his diary too?
What an awful tale from Afghanistan. Was Kevin Tillman part of the second group?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
● Pat Tillman Foundation
● Pat kept a journal, writing in it regularly
● “You know, this war is so f– illegal”
● Classic novels in their down time
● Army Ranger blog
These days, Americans seem to want any war prosecuted by U.S. troops to be pristine — swift, mistake-free, clean. So the U.S. news media decline to show us images of our own dead and wounded. And the Pentagon helpfully distorts or manipulates or conceals facts to cover up unfortunate truths and create romanticized legends.
Cynthia Tucker – War is hell, and there’s no way around it
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Turns out you are in rarefied air. That would-be archetypal American War Hero, Former NFL player Pat Tillman, was also a huge Chomsky buff and virulent Bush-hater.
The Nation: Pat Tillman, Our Hero
The Booman Tribune is not Wolf Blitzerland.
by neoconnedagain on Fri Oct 14th, 2005 at 01:05:38 AM PST
Originally posted in my diary – THIS IS MAJOR! ¶ Our Reichstag’s Fire
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."about this man. Someone you would want to lift a guiness with:
When it was announced that Bush was invoking executive privilege to hide the details of the Tillman investigation, I was puzzled.
Now I’m horrified.
High crimes and misdemeanors, indeed.
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And the disgraceful Pat Tillman saga continues.. How’s this for “supporting the troops” and respecting their families?
Seattle Times:
The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”
Bush/Pentagon on Pat Tillman here, here and here.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."in so many ways. What is happening to us?
It simply goes well beyond the statistics that everything this administration does can be labeled incompetent. Abu Grahib, came out, Jessica Lynch, the toppling of the Saddam statue and even the barbaric hanging series all make America look bad. It goes beyond chance, beyond the random occurence of bumbling idiots.
I do say the mission all along it to bring down the United States.
http://www.spp.gov
And failing that Bush’s acreage in Paraguay makes for a nifty back-up plan.
Weapons of Mass Division.
Strategic Communications Laboratories!
Has anybody mentioned that long wth his clothing his journal was burned
Supposedly, a few days after his death, Tillman had scheduled a meeting with Noam Chomsky. Certainly there had been preliminary communications and perhaps evidence of where this was going. And Chomsky would be a star witness for Waxman. Any info?
He’ll take an opportunity to call bullshit on them, too.
It would be more than the equivalent of this guy going to a Senate hearing and reaming the hell out of Norm Coleman.
No, I don’t think that it is reticence on Chomsky’s part. I think that he could reschedule his commitments, if called. But if he was called, he’d have an opening statement. A big one.
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Army Secretary Pete Geren briefs reporters at the Pentagon. (AP)WASHINGTON – The Army censured a retired three-star general for a “perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership” after the 2004 friendly-fire death in Afghanistan of Army Ranger Pat Tillman.
Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger failed to provide proper leadership to the soldiers under his administrative control. … He let his soldiers down,” Geren said. “He was the captain of that ship, and his ship ran aground.”
At least six other officers received lesser reprimands.
Geren said he considered recommending a court-martial for Kensinger but ruled it out.
“You are hereby censured for your conduct and failure of leadership in matters relating to the investigation and reporting of the death of Corporal Pat Tillman,” said a memo reprimanding the retired general. “Your failings compounded the grief suffered by the Tillman family, resulted in the dissemination of erroneous information and caused lasting damage to the reputation and credibility of the U.S. Army.”
The Army panel will decide whether Kensinger should be stripped of his third star, a move that would cut his retirement benefits. Kensinger, who headed Army special operations, retired in 2006.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Yeah, right. One general sticking his neck out for everyone else who should be guillotined.
We haven’t heard the last of this.
Of course…exactly my point! It would be amazing to get him into the congressional record! And if we want the truth about what Tillman was planning to do or say, there’s the answer.
There’s an amazing cover-up going on here still. Generals disciplined for not telling the parents it was “friendly fire” so that the investigation of the motive for murder is avoided.