Can Brownwoodians Handle the Truth as it relates to Pat Tillman ?

Are steroid mess, Tillman's death truths too tough for us to handle ?

UNION-TRIBUNE
March 24, 2006

In two distinct but equally disturbing roles, Jack Nicholson has told us we can't handle the truth and that women are like men except for reason and accountability.
Wrong on both counts.
Current events keep reminding us that the truth is often more easily fathomed than it is found; that sweeping scandal and terrible tragedy can be digested, even forgiven, but that men are still prone to avoid accountability as if it were diaper duty.
Baseball's slow-breaking response to its steroid problems and the government's egregious boot-dragging concerning the 2004 death of Pat Tillman provide vivid illustrations of how clumsiness is exacerbated by conspiracy; how mistakes become something more sinister when camouflaged by a cover-up.
With “Game of Shadows” now in bookstores, the depth and breadth of baseball's steroid problem finds the industry and the implicated still unable to confront the facts.
Barry Bonds is talking baseball and baseball only. Gary Sheffield has announced he has “moved on.” No wonder. Were either man to confirm the steroid allegations contained in this book, it would be tantamount to admitting they perjured themselves before a grand jury.
Improbably, but predictably, Griffey can't seem to remember the conversation. He and Bonds are friends – second-generation ballplayers who have each surpassed their famous fathers – and there's little to be gained from squealing.
Furthermore, Griffey has continually resisted efforts to emphasize his own example of nature-based slugging. Though juiced sluggers eroded his eminence in the 1990s, and though some of his associates were quick to repeat incriminating hearsay about Bonds, Junior has sought to stay above the fray. He was doing pretty well at it, too, until the long-leaked dinner story found its way into print.
Last week, at a World Baseball Classic workout in Fullerton, Griffey reiterated that role-modeling is a place for parents, not ballplayers, and said baseball lost interest in him as a spokesman after his performance was undermined by injuries.
Griffey has chosen to stay silent on the subject of steroids rather than risk being seen as sanctimonious. He held his tongue as McGwire, Sosa and Bonds erased home run records that might have been his had he stayed healthy.
If Griffey has missed an opportunity to serve the greater good by speaking out, there is a certain nobility to his stoic stance. Pat Tillman, too, preferred to be judged by his deeds rather than his words. When he renounced a $3.6 million pro football contract to take up the search for Osama Bin Laden as an Army Ranger, Tillman resisted all efforts to celebrate his patriotism.
He gave no interviews. He promoted no products. He heard a call to arms in the aftermath of 9/11, and he steadfastly refused to be singled out for serving his country.
The tragic circumstances of Tillman's death – by the friendly fire of his fellow Rangers – in no way diminishes his sacrifice, his selflessness, his courage or his inspiration. But the ideals Tillman embodied were dishonored by the early, duplicitous reports of his death. The truth got trampled.
Earlier this month, the Army announced a fourth investigation into Tillman's death, this one designed to assess the possibility of “criminal negligence” and to ascertain the responsibility and rationale for the fictional press release and Silver Star commendation that were fed to the American public.
At least several days preceding Tillman's May 3, 2004, memorial service, the details of his demise were known at high levels of the chain of command, including Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. central command. Yet Tillman's parents were not informed that their son had been a victim of fratricide for more than a month.
Critical evidence – Tillman's bloody uniform and body armor – was burned, ostensibly because it posed a “biohazard.” The parents now believe their son was used for propaganda purposes; that his example proved useful to an administration reeling from hard tidings on the war front.
Seven soldiers have been reprimanded for their role in Tillman's death, for failing to provide “adequate command control,” or “failure to exercise sound judgment and fire discipline.” But the blame for embellishing the story certainly goes higher than the grunts on the ground. Most likely, it goes much higher.
“After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,” Tillman's father, Patrick, told The Washington Post. “They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.”
Some truths are hard to handle. But they're still better than lies.

Tim Sullivan: (619) 293-1033; tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com
source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/sullivan/20060324-9999-1s24sullivan.html
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Sunday, March 12, 2006

Get Pat Tillman's story right

MARGARET CARLSON
BLOOMBERG NEWS

How many investigations does it take to get to the bottom of the sad story of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former star football player for the Arizona Cardinals who died in Afghanistan in 2004?
As many as it takes to get it right. Under pressure, the Army has held three so far and said last week it was embarking upon two more. One is a review of previous investigations that have the smell of a cover-up. The second is a criminal probe into possible charges of negligent homicide.
Tillman's body was riddled with so many bullets, it raises the question of whether someone was "firing a weapon when they should not have been," Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said March 5 on "Meet the Press."
What we know so far is that the Bush administration approached Tillman's death the way it deals with most information that doesn't make it look good -- with secrecy, deceit and delay. The president's crew thought the tactics used on most people, including members of Congress, would work with grieving parents of a famous recruit.
The Army initially put out an account of a firefight that had Tillman dying at the hands of a fierce enemy along the mountainous Pakistani border. It awarded him a Silver Star and Purple Heart posthumously. The public was riveted by the heartbreaking story of a young man who gave up a multimillion-dollar pro football contract to go fight for his country after 9/11 and was cut down at age 27.
It still is heartbreaking but not the story as told. It took five weeks for the military to quietly issue a statement that Tillman had "probably" died from friendly fire. By then, the Army had staged the show it wanted. Tillman's flag-draped coffin was saluted by hundreds of mourners in a nationally televised ceremony. President Bush called his loss tragic and Tillman "an inspiration on and off the football field."
You can see the Army's motive in "erring" in its first account. In a war that's losing public support, the military searches for heroes wherever it can find them. It's why they built Army Priv. Jessica Lynch into a female Terminator with guns blazing until she recovered enough to eventually tell the less dramatic version of her wounding in Iraq.
She's a hero, nonetheless, like the thousands of kids in harm's way. The truth just wasn't good enough for the military.
Tillman, who would have insisted on telling the truth, wasn't around to do so, so the Army brass kept its secret as long as it could. Maybe they always knew it was a short-term fix, or maybe they didn't count on his parents and Sen. John McCain, who spoke at the memorial service and had been duped as well, demanding an accounting.
Many grieving parents don't. Imagine what the parents of non-celebrities have to do to get attention from the government.
While the record is still incomplete, the events of April 22, 2004, pieced together from witness statements obtained by The Washington Post, bear little relation to that first report by the Army.
Tillman's death was indeed dramatic: He probably knew it was coming, and could do nothing to stop it.
The fatal error occurred when Tillman's commander split his platoon in two, separating them by a canyon across which cell phones didn't work. It was dusk and hard to see who was part of a group of ambushing Afghans and who wasn't.
Tillman's platoon ended up getting shot at by the half left behind. Although he repeatedly screamed "cease fire," waved his arms and sent off a flare to identify his group as friendly, his efforts were interpreted by some as hostile acts and went unnoticed by others. Hundreds of rounds of machine-gun fire hit Tillman's group. Three Americans were wounded. Tillman was killed.
Although Bush, whose policy is to hide returning coffins from public sight, broke his silence to extol Tillman, he has yet to acknowledge that the military publicized a tale that wasn't true about a tragedy that was.
This is of a piece with the sophisticated and massive Bush propaganda operation, which, according to a partial review by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, has spent an astounding $1.6 billion in the last 30 months on spinning and weaving events, including paying journalists to write laudatory op-ed pieces and filming fake newscasts. Of that amount, the Pentagon spent $1.1 billion.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the story was how reflexively the Pentagon chose dishonesty, and for how little reason. This wasn't a lie told to confuse the enemy or protect the troops or honor Tillman, who doesn't need fakery or flackery to make him a hero.
It makes you wonder whether government deception has taken such root and flourishes so readily that no specific instructions are needed. Are there standing orders to invent and then defend a lie to burnish the commander-in-chief, or did a bunch of officials get together and think this one up? Does anyone any longer know that there are things about which you absolutely must tell the truth, so help you God, with no resort to your PR machine?
If a soldier is taught he can't lie to his superiors but they can lie to the public to protect those higher up, what kind of citizens does our Army send home to us? War is hell, whether a patriot like Tillman dies at the hands of the enemy or because of a mistake. Not even a billion dollars can cover that up.

Margaret Carlson is a columnist for Bloomberg News; mcarlson3@bloomberg.net
source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/262582_carlson12.html
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News

No One’s Martyr
A new probe spawns debate over the mysterious

By David McRaney
March 21, 2006

In the dead of night on April 22, 2004, deep in the mine-pocked desert of Afghanistan, a group of United States Army Rangers stood silent around a bonfire.
We will never know what went through their minds as the blaze licked the air between them. We can imagine the flames illuminated their stoic faces as they avoided eye contact. We can assume they stood with their rifles slung low, shifting their body weight and scratching to spend nervous energy. We can almost see them now, alone out there on the sands with one shared purpose for the night - destroying the evidence.
It wasn’t Pat Tillman’s body in the fire; it was his armor and later his uniform, the result of panic within his unit. Two of his fellow Rangers were wounded, a member of the Afghan militia was dead. The blood of a great football hero, the famous patriot, was on all their hands. But for weeks, only a handful of people would know how and why he was killed.
The U.S. Department of Defense announced March 4 they had reopened the case by launching a new criminal investigation into Tillman’s death. This, now the fourth inquiry into the matter, will focus on the cover-up that began before the body was cold.
EVERYONE’S CAUSE
Tillman, born in San Jose Calif., started his college career as a linebacker for Arizona State University in 1994. Proving to be an extraordinary athlete, breaking records and standing out from the crowd, he was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals in 1998. In May 2002, eight months after the 9/11 attacks, he turned down multi-million dollar signing deal and left a promising NFL career to join the U.S. Army.
Failure came swift for most who attempted to advance their cause through Tillman’s death.
Journalists who called him a "dumb jock" and wrote columns about how he was a "macho man" brainwashed by the Bush regime were forced to apologize when they learned he had a 3.8 GPA, majored in accounting and was fond of both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. He had even arranged after his tour of duty to meet with Noam Chomsky, an often-quoted MIT professor who remains a key figure among the left wing of American politics.
Those who sought to build a hero and wrote of Tillman as an example of what constitutes true patriotism suffered the same fate. Bush referred to him as an "inspiration" at Tillman’s televised memorial. His fellow soldiers remember him campaigning for John Kerry and speaking out against the war. His brother said Tillman was not with God because he was not a religious man.
Then, with both sides circling his story for meaning, the military admitted he did not die in a prolonged firefight with the enemy as his family had been told weeks earlier; instead, he had been shot in the head by his own men after repeatedly screaming out his name and pleading for them to cease fire.
It was a killing blow for the campaign to canonize his image. His family soon spoke out about how they were deceived by the military, their anguish turning into rage.
STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND
"If you feel you are being lied to, you can never put it to rest," Tillman’s mother, Mary, explained to the Washington Post. "It makes you feel like you are losing your mind."
The recent decision to reopen the case may be result of the Tillman family’s relentless effort to inform the public about how his death was used as a propaganda tool in an official story based on intentional lies.
"It has been a cover-up from the start," said Tillman’s mother. "The military has had every opportunity to do the right thing and they haven't."
The family and their supporters, including Sen. John McCain, believe the truth was covered up on purpose. They believe someone in the Bush administration allowed the Tillman memorial service to continue, all the while knowing he had been snuffed out by American bullets.
Tillman’s father still believes the Army wished only to protect their image. He told the Washington Post, "After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this.
"They purposely interfered with the investigation. They thought they could control it, and they realized their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a hand basket if the truth about his death got out," he said. "They blew up their poster boy."
In their initial inquiry in May 2004, Brig. Gen. Gary M. Jones revealed Army investigators were aware of the nature of Tillman’s death days after the incident, yet senior officials still approved the awarding of the Silver Star, the Purple Heart and a posthumous promotion from Specialist to Corporal. The citation report accompanying these awards said Tillman was killed by enemy forces and contained a detailed description of a battle Army leadership knew had never taken place.
After pressure from the family and Sen. McCain, an inquiry launched in May 2005 concluded there had been no "official reluctance" to report the truth.
A RELUCTANT HERO
Tillman’s skills had been lauded in the press long before he became a national news story.
Sports Illustrated, among many others, took notice of the tenacious young athlete who seemed to defy convention by writing, "Most football players fit into a box. They're big, fast and strong… they submit to authority without resistance…Then there is Arizona State senior linebacker Pat Tillman, who not only doesn't fit into the box but also would have to consult a travel agent to find it."
In high school, he often defied his coach, running unapproved plays and improvising on the field. At 5-feet-11-inches and 195 pounds, it was likely he would be passed over by most college coaches anyway.
According to Sports Illustrated, Tillman was once asked by Sun Devils coach Bruce Snyder what he thought of the recruiting process. "It stinks," Tillman said. "Nobody tells the truth."
The following August, he told Snyder he wouldn’t take part in redshirting, the tradition of training an incoming freshman for one year before putting them into play. Tillman told Snyder he had things to do with his life adding, "You can do whatever you want with me, but in four years, I'm gone."
At Arizona State, Tillman progressed from special-teams madman as a freshman to situational sub as a sophomore to defensive standout as a junior. He had the second-most tackles and most interceptions, pass deflections and fumble recoveries on the team
By the time Tillman had grown his close-cropped hair into a flowing, golden mane, Sports Illustrated was referring to him as the best player in the country who didn’t have his own award campaign.
After being named the league's defensive player of the year, he told the magazine, "Dude, I'm proud of the things I've done, my schoolwork - because I'm not smart; I just worked hard."
Tillman added, "But it doesn't do me any good to be proud. It's better to just force myself to be naive about things, because otherwise I'll start being happy with myself, and then I'll stand still, and then I'm old news."
Tillman looked like a surfer but was fond of jumping through the forest from treetop to treetop like Tarzan minus a rope. He played football like an insatiable beast, but he majored in marketing. He wasn’t religious, but he often circled passages of the Bible, Torah and other such texts, sending them to friends so they could discuss the implications.
After being drafted by Arizona State, Tillman was arrested and charged as a juvenile for felony assault. He had defended a friend in front of a Pizza Hut at 17, reducing the 20-year-old attacker to a pulp. In the summer of '94, he served 30 days in a juvenile detention facility. His conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor upon his release – two weeks before his first college football practice.
"I'm proud of that chapter in my life," Tillman said. "I'm not proud of what happened, but I'm proud that I learned more from that one bad decision than all the good decisions I've ever made. I'm proud that nobody found out, because I didn't want to come to Arizona State with people thinking that I was a hoodlum, because I'm not. It made me realize that stuff you do has repercussions. You can lose everything."
In 2001, Tillman turned down a $9 million, five-year offer from the Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams to remain with the Arizona Cardinals. The next year, he turned down a three-year, $3.6 million contract with the Cardinals to enlist in the Army. Most assumed he had been moved in the wake of 9/11.
"My great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor," he told NBC News soon after the attack on the towers. "I really haven’t done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that."
Tillman had played four seasons with the Cardinals before he enlisted for a three-year stint in the Army with his younger brother Kevin. He told Sports Illustrated he would return to the NFL after his service.
Both denied requests for media coverage of their basic training and deployments. Officials said the two wanted no special treatment or attention – they wanted to be considered soldiers doing their duty.
THE BATTLE
A number of accounts have surfaced after three inquiries into Tillman’s death. This much is clear, something went terribly wrong on the battlefield.
According to testimony, on April 22, 2004, a Humvee in the 30-member A Company, 2nd battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment led by Lieutenant David Uthlaut, broke down as the unit drove towards Manah, south of Kabul.
The patrol halted and took up defensive positions while attempting to repair the vehicle.
After failing to revive the Humvee, the patrol split in two. The forward unit moved ahead while the rear unit followed towing the disabled jeep with a truck. The rear group was about 15 minutes behind in a deep ravine, out of visual and radio contact, when they believed they were ambushed.
Tillman left the forward group and headed back with another Ranger and an Afghan militiaman. He set up on the side of the ravine opposite where enemy fire was supposedly coming from. The Afghan and Tillman rose from cover to shoot at the enemy’s position. His fire drew the attention of the rear group in the ravine, and they answered with every weapon they had.
The Afghan was killed instantly. Tillman, fellow soldiers testified, waved his arms, yelled "cease fire" and set off a smoke grenade to signal he was not an enemy.
A soldier in the ravine called for a cease fire. When the firing stopped, Tillman and his colleague stood up. Then, for reasons still unclear, the shooting resumed. Tillman’s body armor was riddled with "numerous" hits.
One soldier testified, "I could hear the pain in his voice as he called out, 'Cease fire, friendlies! I'm Pat f----ing Tillman, dammit.' He said this repeatedly until he fell, hit by three bullets in the forehead."
Later, they would burn his bloody, bullet-punched body armor and uniform.
A CONFUSING MEMORIAL
Despite knowing much of the particulars of Tillman’s death, officials pressed forward with his televised, emotionally-charged, patriotism-soaked memorial service. But already something stirred among those who knew Tillman best.
Maria Schriver, wife of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, read from a letter written by her husband, "I was told he admired me but it's the reverse. Pat's journey, that's the American dream, and he sacrificed that. That to me is a real hero."
Shriver went on to quote John F. Kennedy.
"My uncle once said, 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' You, Pat, have lived those words," she said.
"It was an honor to coach Pat," former Cardinals assistant coach Larry Marmie said. "I learned a lot from him. Players often look for the respect from their coaches. I found myself trying to earn Pat's respect."
His brother-in-law and close friend, Alex Garwood, came to the ceremony dressed as a woman. "We had two godfathers, no godmother,'' Garwood explained.
His brother Rich attended in a plain white shirt and blue jeans. When he reached the podium he cursed and ranted in an unprepared speech telling the audience, "Thank you for your thoughts, but he’s f----ing dead."
The ceremony at the San Jose Municipal Garden concluded with an excerpt from one of Tillman’s favorite Emerson quotes, "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.''
It wasn’t long before detractors, sickened by the iconography, spoke out.
The Portland, Ore., chapter of Indymedia.org posted the news of Tillman's death accompanied by a headline reading, "Dumb Jock Killed in Afghanistan." Comments on the website suggested alternate titles for the piece, like "Privileged Millionaire, Blinded by Nationalist Mythology, Pisses Away the Good Life," and "Capitalist Chooses to Kill Innocents Instead of Cashing Check." The Urbana-Champaign, Ill., chapter ran an article about Tillman with a headline reading, "Pat Tillman is gone good riddance." A commenter wrote, "I saw the Post this morning, on the front page. It was sickening. They built this guy up like he was Audie Murphy or something, publishing this foto of him in his Ranger getup, all tough-looking and stony-jawed, like a god----' recruiting ad ... Puke-o-rama. Cold as it may sound, 'Dumb Jock Dies for Pipeline in Afghanistan' pretty much sums it up."
Most of the websites and news organizations have since apologized publicly for their ignorance after statements from Tillman like one calling the war in Iraq "so f----ing illegal" surfaced. In the initial inquiry it was revealed Tillman joined the Army specifically to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but was sent to participate in the invasion of Iraq against his wishes.
As before, Tillman defied those who would jump to conclusions about his motives.
THE NEW INQUIRY
Now Tillman is once again being studied.
His family, who refuses to give in, want to know what did Donald Rumsfeld know about Tillman's death and when did he know it? They suggest if Army Ranger commanders and the Army Secretary knew Tillman was killed in a fratricide, Rumsfeld must have known too.
When Tillman first joined the Army, Rumsfeld personally commended him with a signed letter. If Rumsfeld knew the nature of Tillman's killing in April, 2004, some believe he directed the obfuscation of the truth.
"There have been so many discrepancies so far that it’s hard to know what to believe," Mary Tillman told the San Francisco Chronicle. "There are too many murky details." The files the family received from the Army about Tillman’s death are heavily censored, with blacked-out sections and deleted names on almost every page.
"I want to know what kind of criminal intent there was," Mary Tillman told the Chronicle.
Tillman’s father added, "In Washington, I don’t think any of them want it investigated. They (politicians and Army officials) just don’t want to see it ended with them, landing on their desk so they get blamed for the cover-up."
THE MAN, THE METAPHOR
Russell Baer who served with Tillman told sfgate.com Tillman encouraged him in his ambitions as an amateur poet. "I would read him my poems, and we would talk about them," Baer said. "He helped me grow as an individual."
Other soldiers remember Tillman created a makeshift base library of classic novels so his platoon mates would have literature to read in their down time.
Baer also told sfgate.com Tillman was popular among his fellow soldiers recalling, "The guys who killed Pat were his biggest fans."
The Cardinals retired Tillman’s No. 40 and named the plaza surrounding the new stadium under construction in suburban Glendale the "Pat Tillman Freedom Plaza."
Arizona State retired Tillman’s No. 42 jersey and placed his name on the honor ring at Sun Devil Stadium.
A highway bypass around the Hoover Dam will have a bridge bearing Tillman's name. When completed in 2008, it will span the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona.
Pat Tillman's high school in San Jose, Calif., renamed its football field after him.
His family remains hopeful this new investigation will prove the U.S. government lied about his death for one reason; they created a hero, and then they killed him.
Tillman's former roommate, Zack Walz, took a newspaper clipping to the podium at the memorial and read about how his teammates made up faux dog tags for themselves years ago, declaring their unit a band of warriors.
"Soldiers, battlers, lay it on the line,'' Walz said, weeping. "What the hell did we know? Listen to the words. Listen to the metaphors. How hollow they ring."
source: http://www.studentprintz.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/21/441f8e689e4e4