Frank Rich: The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman

[G_j]

Frank Rich writes, 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."

Frank Rich: The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110605Z.shtml

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."

..more..

[gratuitous]

1. Tillman want to pursue the enemy that had actually attacked his country?

Then why was he in Afghanistan? Or was there a special "NFL players and elite columnists only" version of the promised white paper that would establish once and for all who was behind the September 11 attacks? Because this ordinary citizen sure as the world hasn't seen any such report out of this corrupt administration.

[WhiteTara]

2. now we just have to stop the ballot theives

and we can say the button has popped on this turkey administration.

[Midwest_Doc]

3. Ted Rall's Editorial Comic on Pat Tillman

If anyone has it, please post it on this thread. It gets right to the point.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

7. It was also amazingly shallow and wrong

It portrayed Tillman as an unthinking, neanderthal idiot who simply signed up to kill Arabs. He clearly didn't. All who knew him said he wasn't the typical jock but a well read and sensitive young man and further information in recent months has come to light that he believed the war was illegal and immoral.

[shance]

4. The article ignores a key element: that Tillman woke up about the war(s)

That he mentioned to fellow troop(s) what they were engaging in was "illegal".

There was a definite motive for the Administration or Rumsfeld or both to be concerned. In their perverted need to watch everyone but themselves with a fine toothed comb, it can certainly be ascertained they were keeping good notes. Tillman was a celebrity to many.

And more importantly, through having the concern to "meet the enemy" himself, Tillman got a firsthand glimpse of who the true enemy is.

In seeing and experiencing life as a soldier in BushCheneyPNAC world, and living the horrific charade himself and awakening to the lies and betrayal, he then became a threat to the Administration.

Then came his death, surrounded by too much suspicion, just like everything else surrounding this Administration.

[Jade Fox]

5. When you read stuff like this...

it is simply amazing what the Bush Administration thinks it can get away
with. Did it never occur to them that Tillman's parents would not just
go along with the program? If so, that is sheer idiocy.

Hey, Neocons: Not everyone will go along with your program like Terri
Schiavo did. She was dead.

[leftchick]

6. They still have not finished the inquiry?

I fell so sorry for his family. This is yet another outrage from bushco** And fuck Abizaid for playing politics for his boss instead of respecting one of his soldiers. :grr:

<snip>

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.

Why? It's here where we find a repeat of the same pattern that drove the Valerie Wilson leak a year earlier. Faced with unwelcome news - from the front, from whistle-blowers, from scandal - this administration will always push back with change-the-subject stunts (like specious terror alerts), fake news or, as with Joseph Wilson, smear campaigns. Much as the White House was out to bring down Mr. Wilson because he threatened to expose its prewar hype of Saddam's supposed nuclear prowess, so the Pentagon might have been out to delay or rewrite a story that could be trouble when public opinion on the war itself was just starting to plummet.

[punpirate]

8. I think the Tillmans' insisted on another...

... investigation, because every report they got changed facts from the previous one. The last they got, one of the six or seven volumes was completely redacted, start to finish. They were also furious that one of the commanders was apparently allowed to change his testimony at a later date.