What really happened to Pat Tillman ? Why would you "Not" hear about this on the Brownwood airwaves ?

What really happened to Pat Tillman ?
By CHARLES LAURENCE
19mar06

PRIVATE Pat Tillman, 27 and all-American hero to the soles of his boots, died in a lonely ravine in Afghanistan -- killed by his own men.

Like so many others, Tillman's patrol was ambushed by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters as it approached Manah village in the south of the country.
Tillman died in a hail of bullets, his family and country were told, bravely fighting their common enemy. His death galvanised America in the President Bush's so-called War Against Terror. As he had lived, so he had died -- the hero featured in news dispatches at home.
But the truth was that, in a confused and terrified state during the ambush, his men had turned their guns on him.
He was a victim of "friendly fire". Or was he murdered?
Strikingly good-looking Tillman had been a professional football player on a multi-million dollar contract. When he joined the elite Army Rangers he was hailed as an example of all that was good in American men: he had turned his back on a millionaire lifestyle to fight those responsible for the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
The truth of his death emerged only when Tillman's regiment, the 75th Rangers, was due to return to the US and commanders feared the real story would get out.
There have been three military inquiries into the tragedy, but last week a fourth probe was announced, this time by the army's criminal investigations division. Disturbingly, it will ask whether Tillman was murdered.
The sequence of events that led to Tillman's death on April 22, 2004, began with the breakdown of a Humvee military vehicle as the 30-strong A Company, 2nd battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, led by Lieutenant David Uthlaut, made its way towards Manah, south of Kabul.
The patrol halted and took up defensive positions while efforts were made to repair the vehicle.
When that proved impossible, headquarters ordered the patrol to split in two, with the forward unit going on in daylight and the rear -- with the broken Humvee on a truck -- following.
The rear group was about 15 minutes behind in a deep ravine, out of visual and radio contact with colleagues, when they were ambushed.
TILLMAN headed back to the scene from the front group and climbed a hill with another Ranger and an Afghan militiaman.
As he ran up the mountainside, he drew level with the rear group's position, who were about 65 yards away in the ravine. The enemy fire was coming from the other side of the ravine and the Afghan with Tillman rose from cover to shoot at their position.
But his fire drew the attention of the group under attack and -- as US soldiers are taught to do, the rear section answered that muzzle-flash with every weapon they had.
The Afghan was killed instantly. Tillman, surviving soldiers testify, waved his arms, yelled "cease fire" and let off a smoke grenade as a signal that they were "friendlies".
A soldier in the group under attack recognised them and called for his guns to cease fire. There was a lull in the firing and Tillman and his colleague stood up. But -- inexplicably -- the shooting started again. Tillman was hit in the wrist with shrapnel, and his body armour absorbed "numerous" rounds.
His colleague testified to an inquiry: "I could hear the pain in his voice as he called out: 'Cease fire, friendlies! I'm Pat f------ Tillman, dammit'. He said this repeatedly until he fell, hit by three bullets in the forehead."
The inquiry stated: "Some soldiers lost situational awareness to the point they had no idea where they were."
But, in the immediate aftermath, that wasn't the story the Pentagon told Tillman's family or the rest of the US. He had been killed by the enemy, they were told.
At a televised memorial service, President Bush declared Tillman an "inspiration" in the war on terror.
Only towards the end of May did the truth come out -- and the grief of Tillman's family turned into fury.
"If you feel you are being lied to, you can never put it to rest," his mother, Mary, explains.
"It makes you feel like you are losing your mind."
The Tillman family and a growing number of Americans believe that Tillman was ruthlessly used as a propaganda tool in an official story based on conscious lying.
Indeed, Tillman's death is a huge issue that challenges the credibility of President Bush's White House and of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon.
'IT has been a cover-up from the start,' says Mrs Tillman. 'The military has had every opportunity to do the right thing and they haven't.'
The family and the growing squadron of critics backing them, led by potential Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain, see the details of how Tillman died as the secondary issue. They know he was a victim of friendly fire and have no interest in any soldier facing charges.
They want to know why the truth was concealed and by whom.
It is not the soldiers in the heat of war they want brought to justice, but the officials who covered up and who, they suspect, used a dead man to their advantage.
As an editorial in one newspaper, the conservative Palm Beach Post in Florida, put it after the latest inquiry was announced: "In the most egregious abuse, the Army already knew that Cpl Tillman (he was promoted posthumously) had died from friendly fire when it turned a nationally televised memorial service that painted him as the victim of an enemy ambush into an exercise in propaganda.
"Too much of what has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq never has been adequately explained. Cpl Tillman's family deserve answers. So does the rest of the country."
Patrick Tillman, the soldier's father, is a lawyer in California and it was his persistence and faith in his suspicions that prompted the series of military investigations and their -- censored -- reports.
Mr Tillman says: "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 realised that their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out.
"They blew up their poster boy."
The third and main inquiry report last May, in response to pressure from the family and Senator McCain, concluded there had been no "official reluctance" to report the truth.
DAILY MAIL
source: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18510954%255E663,00.html
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December 10, 2004

Tillman's True Tragedy

Although I had some thoughts at the time, I thought it would be churlish to question the decision of Pat Tillman, in his fourth year as a linebacker for the NFL Arizona Cardinals, with a $3.6 million contract, to give up professional sports and enlist in the Army Rangers after the 9/11 attacks. Although he had made a decision I would not have made, even if I were his age, I presumed he had his reasons, and as the owner of his own life he certainly had the right to put it at risk.
As somebody who played football in high school and college – at least through my freshman year, after which the coaches advised me (trying to make it as a 165-pound lineman) of something I already knew, that I was unlikely to be a successful varsity player and it might be prudent to concentrate on academics and beer – and a huge fan of the game still, I don't have the disdain for athletes that some do. My own experience suggests that there aren't a lot of deep thinkers out there on the gridiron. However, I also know that mastering a playbook requires a certain degree of raw intelligence, and staying at it (especially when most of the other players are bigger, stronger, and more athletic than you, but also even when you have athletic gifts) takes some combination of foolhardiness and grit that is not entirely unadmirable. No matter how good you are, you can't play football without experiencing some pain or embarrassment at making mistakes or boneheaded plays. Continuing in the face of even minor adversity takes something.
Whatever his reasons, however thoughtfully he had approached the decision, Pat Tillman made his own decision. After he made the decision, he purposely kept a low profile, resisting the impulse some in the media and many among the superficially patriotic had to turn him into a hero and a role model to be lauded and lionized. This increased my respect for him. As it turns out, he does seem to have been an unusual and, on balance, admirable young man.
Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden, who interviewed him at length while he was in college and the Pac-10 defensive player of the year, wrote that he was unusually honest and "the type of football player who performed fully without regard for his body. He played at 100 percent of his speed, power and passion 100 percent of the time. That quality is indescribably rare. He was also able to use his brain as effectively as his body. Coaches who told him something had to do so only once."
Death in Afghanistan
When Pat Tillman was killed in a firefight in Afghanistan last April, while his decision to put himself in Uncle Sam's service seemed to me sadly tragic, even wasteful, he made his decision and he paid the ultimate price for it. Though I felt no temptation to lionize or idealize him, it seemed best to let him and his memory rest in peace. It also turned out, as people found during his memorial services in San Jose, that he hardly fit the stereotype of a gung-ho patriotic jock. As Gwen Knapp noted in a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, he read widely, thought about what he read, and was eager to engage others in discussions about serious matters. He asked his coach at Arizona State if he would coach gays, and was pleased to hear that he would and did. At the memorial, his youngest brother Rich "asked mourners to hold their spiritual bromides":
"Pat isn't with God. He's f––ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f—ing dead."
It seemed all the more tragic. This sounded like a person you would like to hoist a few brews with.
The curt acknowledgment on May 29, by Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger, Jr., at Fort Bragg, N.C., that Tillman was "probably" killed by "friendly fire" – one of those astoundingly presumptuous military euphemisms that means killed by people on one's own side – didn't make me want to lament Tillman in public either. People are killed in all kinds of ways in war. It used to be that disease killed more soldiers than enemies did, and accidental killings by one's own side have been part of war for millennia. It made the death a little sadder, however.
Probable Pentagon Cover-Up
This week, however, more information has come out about just how Cpl. Tillman died and how the Army responded, and it does seem appropriate to comment. The Washington Post ran a piece Sunday that explained a great deal more than we had known before.
"Dozens of witness statements, e-mails, investigation findings, logbooks, maps, and photographs obtained by The Washington Post show that Tillman died unnecessarily," wrote the Post's Steve Coll, "after botched communications, a mistaken decision to split his platoon over the objections of its leader, and negligent shooting by pumped-up young Rangers – some in their first firefight – who failed to identify their targets as they blasted their way out of a frightening ambush. The records show Tillman fought bravely and honorably until his last breath. They also show that his superiors exaggerated his actions and invented details as they burnished his legend in public, at the same time suppressing details that might tarnish Tillman's commanders."
Briefly, after a Humvee broke down, the platoon was ordered to split up, with Tillman's half going on ahead to put "boots on the ground" in the little town of Manah. The other half of the platoon followed on the same road, which was not the original plan. Because of the terrain, they lost radio contact. When an explosion went off, they figured they were under attack by Taliban insurgents and fired back. It turned out the two halves of the platoon were firing at one another. Tillman was killed. The Army knew this almost immediately, but didn't tell the family and didn't release the information publicly (and then curtly, with no questions answered) until more than a month later.
As a Post story Monday related, the Army preferred "a distorted and incomplete narrative." The public release "made no mention of friendly fire, even though at the time it was issued, investigators in Afghanistan had already taken at least 14 sworn statements from Tillman's platoon members that made clear the true causes of his death. The statements included a searing account from the Ranger nearest Tillman during the firefight, who quoted him as shouting 'Cease fire! Friendlies!' with his last breath."
In the documents the Post was able to obtain, the names of lower-ranking Rangers who made mistakes were listed, and some seem to have been disciplined. The names of higher-ups were redacted. We don't know who the higher-up was who gave the order – from a distance and by radio, perhaps not appreciating the situation on the ground – to split the platoon up.
Angry Family
The plot thickened further with a Los Angeles Times story Monday suggesting, based on interviews with Afghan witnesses, that there weren't even Afghan insurgents around – that there was an explosion (perhaps set off by insurgents), but no enemy gunfire. The two halves of the platoon, by these accounts, started firing at one another, each half thinking the other was the enemy.
Perhaps most unsettling in the Times story was the way the Pentagon treated the Tillman family. "Tillman's parents say the military has deceived them and stonewalled their attempts to find out how their son died. Although the Tillmans believe the Rangers who shot their son had been fired on by insurgents, they also say the Pentagon has tried to cover up deadly mistakes and negligence that night."
"'I'm disgusted by things that have happened with the Pentagon since my son's death. I don't trust them one bit,' Mary Tillman said in a telephone interview last week from her home in San Jose." Mary Tillman thinks the military burned her son's uniform to cover up the circumstances of his death. The family didn't learn that friendly fire was even suspected until weeks later. Patrick's' father "has been frustrated by what he described as deception and inconsistent statements by the Pentagon."
Honor Where Due
None of the information that has come out – and surely we are quite a bit short of knowing the whole story – seems to deprecate Pat Tillman's personal courage and sense of honor and duty. One wonders, however, whether the story will resonate with others who might be thinking of making similar decisions. The desire to fight back against terrorism, even to serve one's country in time of dire need is commendable. But those who think of volunteering should be mindful that their sacrifices might well be used by cynical or fearful higher-ups who will consider the good of the Army more important than the bravery of the soldier or the truth that should be owed to the bereaved.
As Ambivablog, who has chronicled this story admirably, put it, "[W]ar is ugly and messy, and we desperately need to believe it is noble and glorious. Without the mortician's makeup job, would any democratic public support any war?"
Pat Tillman's story illustrates once again that, to a great extent, war is about old men sending gallant and brave young men to die, often for causes that are less than noble or even well-thought-out.
source: http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=4143