When the history of the U.S.'s conduct of the so-called War on Terror is written, it will be seen as a mosaic of politics over policy, not enough troops and support personnel, inadequate training, lousy intelligence and ever changing rationales.
The story of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger who was killed in Afghanistan, is smack dab in the center of that mosaic, and were it not for the perspicacity of his mother, Mary Tillman, with a notable assist from The Associated Press, the extent of that abominable tragedy would never be known. And as it is, the full extent probably never will be.
Tillman, a rookie sensation at safety for the Arizona Cardinals, walked away from a multi-million dollar contract to enlist in the Army with his brother Kevin after the 9/11 attacks. After participating in the initial phase of the Iraq war, he completed training at Ranger School and was sent to Afghanistan.
On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman was killed in what was initially claimed to be a firefight following a Taliban ambush.
The 27-year-old specialist was declared a hero and posthumously awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. His death was milked unmercifully by the Pentagon and White House in one of the more shameful propaganda ploys of the twin wars that is reminiscent of the way that manufactured myth so completely displaced reality in the case of Army Private First Class Jessica Lynch.
Shameful because it was known within hours of Tillman's death that he was an apparent victim of friendly fire.
As it was, the Army's account of what happened soon began to unravel, and the real story trickled out in dribs and drabs because Mary Tillman never believed the official account and kept the heat on, while The Associated Press, in the finest tradition of investigative journalism, gave a team of reporters carte blanche to find out what really occurred.
What occurred was there were no Taliban and Tillman was killed at close range by fellow soldiers, so close that there were three bullet holes in close proximity in his forehead.
The elaborately orchestrated cover-up, which included encouraging soldiers to change their testimony to fit the ever-changing official versions, reached all the way to the White House, and the Army didn't even tell Tillman's parents that their son had not been killed by insurgents until well after a widely covered memorial service. Only a small handful of officers have been wrist slapped because of the cover-up and none have faced major disciplinary charges, let alone courts martial.
It has been assumed that as horrific as Tillman's death was, it was a classic example of friendly fire in which a trooper is accidentally killed in the heat of combat. But Mary Tillman, who was given access by sympathetic congressmen to classified Army documents that the AP and other media did not see, asserts in a new book that her son may have been murdered in cold blood.In the just-published Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman, Mary Tillman says she strongly suspects that the men who shot her son stepped out of a Humvee to aim carefully at him and were not speeding by on a bumpy mountain road as they told Army investigators.
Mary Tillman writes that at one of the briefings the Army gave her after the cover-up was exposed, she expressed incredulity at Brigadier General Gary Jones, the lead investigator, who dismissed out of hand the account of Specialist Bryan O'Neal, who was just a few feet away from Tillman when gunfire erupted.
"No one got out of the vehicle. That early information is incorrect, and O'Neal is the least reliable witness because he was so traumatized," Mary Tillman says Jones told her.
"You won't believe O'Neal, but you'll believe the guys who were shooting at him!" she replied.
I cannot take sides regarding Mary Tillman's murder allegation absent an explanation as to why Tillman's fellow Rangers would want to kill him. But I do know that the Army shows no interest in investigating whether the death was a crime, as the bullet holes in his forehead fired from a Ranger's precision sniper's rifle might indicate, while key evidence such as bullet fragments have gone missing, a familiar occurrence in cover-ups.
And that it is Mary Tillman and certainly not the Army who holds the high ground.
More here.Photograph by Susan Walsh/The Associated Press
2 comments:
Minor correction: Tillman played Safety, not Defensive End. The difference is only about a hundred pounds, but football fans will know.
My bad. Fixed. Thank you.
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