George Bush's War of Lies and Illusions

August 06, 2007

How many more official lies in Tillman cover-up?

He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated barely a week after he was killed, an exuberant Pat Tillman in full football gear running down a gridiron, his helmet in his right hand and what looks like a scream of triumph pulsing up his full-throttle face. The headline read: "AN ATHLETE DIES A SOLDIER: PAT TILLMAN, 1976-2004," with an inset of Tillman as an Army Ranger, the American flag behind him.

Sports Illustrated may want to rethink the cover.

Pat Tillman didn't die as, accepting the worst as soldiers do, he might have expected. He may have been murdered. By his own troops. And the flag he needlessly died for didn't stand by him, as it does in that inset. Those who speak for that flag as Tillman wore it lied. They covered up. They deceived. Many times over.

The military lied to Tillman's family about the circumstances of his death in Afghanistan the evening of April 22, 2004. Tillman and his platoon were supposedly involved in a firefight. He was killed. The Army knew within days at most that "friendly fire" was the culprit. It told Tillman's family that Pat died a hero, and didn't own up to the friendly-fire evidence until five weeks later, on May 29, 2004, and even then, qualified the death as "probably" caused by friendly fire.

As The Associated Press reported in late July, a doctor who examined Tillman's body said the evidence did not match up with the Army's scenario of Tillman being shot by his own troops from long range, in the confusion of a battle at dusk. He had three M-16 bullet holes in his forehead, close together, suggesting a close-range shooting.

Tillman's enlistment in May 2002 was big news. He was a rising star in the NFL. He gave up a $3.6 million contract from the Arizona Cardinals. "That is a bigger and better story than usually makes the front page," the conservative columnist and former speechwriter for the first George Bush gushed about Tillman's enlistment. "Markets rise and fall, politicians come and go, but that we still make Tillmans is headline news." That we kill them, then lie about it to keep it from becoming headline news, is only part of the disturbing story.

Last week, both Ret. Gen., Richard Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, claimed they knew nothing about the Tillman affair. They may have basked in all the patriotic glory that Tillman's enlistment brought. But here they were, Myers and Rumsfeld, acting as if Tillman was just another serial number. They blamed it all on the Army, or their failing memory, or a failing "system."

The failing system wasn't only the Army's truth pipeline. It was the Pentagon's and the White House's deceptive management of war stories. Just as the Pentagon had made up the story of the heroism of Jessica Lynch, the West Virginia soldier wounded and captured in an ambush in the early days of the Iraq war -- the Pentagon said she went down firing her rifle until she ran out of ammunition; in fact, she never fired a shot -- it made up a story about Tillman's heroism until the story couldn't stand up to the facts. Hasn't that been the true overriding story of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Tillman was famous. His killing was investigated repeatedly because he was famous, and because it was apparent the Army was fudging again and again. The answers still aren't all clear. What about soldiers who aren't famous, soldiers who die in suspect circumstances but who don't command the star power of a Tillman to force the necessary investigations and get at the answers? We may never know.

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.