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Fri 20 Oct, 2006 03:40 pm
In this article, Pat Tillman's brother Kevin writes his thoughts about the direction the war has taken. Pretty powerful stuff, coming from this guy...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
EXTENSIVE background by ESPN:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=tillmanpart1
Very well put together, I must say. Thanks for the link snood
Cycloptichorn
Kevin Tillman wrote:Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet
Amen to that. The sight of all the clueless people with stickers on their SUVs got my blood boiling. Probably less than one percent of them had even a remote clue as to what the soldiers were actually going through.
I'm not going to fault the kindergartners for scribbling pictures.
He said what needed to be said.
It's all powerful . . . but this is the part that sums it all up:
"Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is."
We must condemn those in power who are the purveyors of holier-than-thou hypocrisy and vote them out of office before they destroy our country.
"Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground."
Heartwrenching. My stepdaughter is a Sargeant in the Army. She's in it for the long haul with only seven years until her 20th?-she's done one tour and preparing to return to Iraq in January?-and the conflict and confusion that comes into her eyes when this war is discussed around her, which we stopped doing, just breaks my heart. For these brave soldiers to have to doubt themselves and what they've vowed to do, fight for their country, is a cruel trick, an abomination.
"This war is so f*ckin illegal", Pat Tillman on Iraq. To bad his journal came up missing with his murder. What a great brother Kevin Tillman.
I would love to see that journal.
Mr. and Mrs. Tillman would love to read that journal too.
Pentagon Challenged on Lynch and Tillman
SCOTT LINDLAW and ERICA WERNER
AP
April 24, 2007
WASHINGTON ?- An Army Ranger who was with Pat Tillman when he died by friendly fire said Tuesday he was told by a higher-up to conceal that information from Tillman's family.
"I was ordered not to tell them," U.S. Army Specialist Bryan O'Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
He said he was given the order by then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey, the battalion commander who oversaw Tillman's platoon.
Pat Tillman's brother Kevin was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened, but didn't see it. O'Neal said Bailey told him specifically not to tell Kevin Tillman that the death was friendly fire rather than heroic engagement with the enemy.
"He basically just said, 'Do not let Kevin know, he's probably in a bad place knowing that his brother's dead,'" O'Neal said. He added that Bailey made clear he would "get in trouble" if he told.
Kevin Tillman was not in the hearing room when Bailey spoke.
-------------------------------------------------------
April 24, 2007
Pentagon Challenged on Lynch and Tillman
By JOHN HOLUSHA
New York Times
Military and other administration officials created a heroic story about the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman to distract attention from setbacks in Iraq and the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Grhaib, the slain man's younger brother, Kevin Tillman, said today.
Testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Mr. Tillman said the military knew almost immediately that Corporal Tillman, an Army Ranger who left a career as a pro football player to enlist, had been killed accidentally in Afghanistan in April 2004 by fire from his own unit. But officials chose to put a "patriotic glow" on his death, he said.
Mr. Tillman said the decision to award his brother a Silver Star and to say that he died heroically fighting the enemy was "utter fiction" that was intended to "exploit Pat's death."
Former Pvt. Jessica Lynch leveled similar criticism today at the hearing about the initial accounts given by the Army of her capture in Iraq. Ms. Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital in dramatic fashion by American troops after she suffered serious injuries and was captured in an ambush of her truck convoy in March 2003.
In her testimony this morning, she said she did not understand why the Army put out a story that she went down firing at the enemy.
"I'm confused why they lied," she said.
Mr. Tillman and Ms. Lynch appeared at a hearing called to examine why "inaccurate accounts of these two incidents" were put out by the administration. Today's session was part of the Democratically-controlled Congress's effort to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other issues.
Pentagon officials and military representatives were scheduled to testify later in the hearing.
Ms. Lynch said she could not know why she was depicted as a "Rambo from West Virginia," when in fact she was riding in a truck, not fighting, when she was injured.
Dr. Gene Bolles, a doctor who treated Ms. Lynch at a hospital in Germany after she was rescued, said that her injuries, while extensive, were not the result of bullet wounds, as first described.
Mr. Tillman's tone was more bitter than Ms. Lynch's. He described the early accounts of his brother's death as "deliberate and calculated lies" and "deliberate acts of deceit," rather than the result of confusion or innocent error.
For her part, Ms. Lynch said in her testimony that other members of her unit had acted with genuine heroism that deserved the attention she received. "The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideas of heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate tales," she said.
Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, the chairman of the committee, said the hearings were intended to determine the "sources and motivations" for the erroneous accounts and to see whether Administration officials had been held accountable for them.
Personal accountability. That's one'a them conservative values, ain't it?
I am very interested in Ticoyama, Asherman, mysteryman, Baldimo or anyone else who might take a crack at it, telling me what they think about the lies the government manufactured and perpetuated about Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch. Does it even give you a second of pause or hesitation? Does it create any doubt in you at all about the "official" military stories about Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo, or the justification for the Iraq War?
Or do you write it off as disgruntled family members, or puppets for the insidious leftwing?
What do those on the right think about the testimony about the elaborate lies they manufactured and sold to the public about their "war heros"?
This is an upsetting story on the people who rescued Jessica Lynch. "Just a Coincidence? Four of Jessica Lynch's Rescuers Have Died ...Four of Jessica Lynch's Rescuers Have Died Mysteriously ... He took part in the rescue. Lance Cpl. Sok Khak Ung was killed in a drive-by shooting. ..."
www.propagandamatrix.com/291003lynchrescuers.html - 22k -
Bump
I am really interested to hear what those on the right here on A2K think about the testimony coming from Tillman's relatives and Jessica Lynch.
I know you guys have seen or heard about the testimony. McGentrix? Brandon? Not even one word of support for your noble military and its commander in chief?
snood
Your desire and hope for an honest and rational accounting (from those people you've named) of the Pentagon's behavior and the administration's behavior regarding this matter won't be realized. Six years of history and of posts here provide utterly depressing evidence that a portion of the US citizenry probably cannot - for whatever set of emotional reasons - face or accept contradictions to their ideology which run so deep and are so profound. Timber, I think, is the only one who might have managed some movement in this direction.
Here's how bad it gets...
Quote:In a transcript of his interview with Brig. Gen. Gary Jones during a November 2004 investigation, Kauzlarich said he'd learned Kevin Tillman, Pat's brother and fellow Army Ranger who was a part of the battle the night Pat Tillman died, objected to the presence of a chaplain and the saying of prayers during a repatriation ceremony in Germany before his brother's body was returned to the United States.
Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family's unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.
In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: "When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more ?- that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough."
Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans' religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, "I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know."
Asked what might finally placate the family, Kauzlarich said, "You know what? I don't think anything will make them happy, quite honestly. I don't know. Maybe they want to see somebody's head on a platter. But will that really make them happy? No, because they can't bring their son back."
Kauzlarich, now 40, was the Ranger regiment executive officer in Afghanistan, who played a role in writing the recommendation for Tillman's posthumous Silver Star. And finally, with his fingerprints already all over many of the hot-button issues, including the question of who ordered the platoon to be split as it dragged a disabled Humvee through the mountains, Kauzlarich conducted the first official Army investigation into Tillman's death.
That investigation is among the inquiries that didn't satisfy the Tillman family.
"Well, this guy makes disparaging remarks about the fact that we're not Christians, and the reason that we can't put Pat to rest is because we're not Christians," Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, said in an interview with ESPN.com. Mary Tillman casts the family as spiritual, though she said it does not believe in many of the fundamental aspects of organized religion.
"Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that this whole thing is shady," she said sarcastically, "But it is because we are not Christians."
After a pause, her voice full with emotion, she added, "Pat may not have been what you call a Christian. He was about the best person I ever knew. I mean, he was just a good guy. He didn't lie. He was very honest. He was very generous. He was very humble. I mean, he had an ego, but it was a healthy ego. It is like, everything those [people] are, he wasn't."
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_04_22_archive.html#4741965420177133870
Or this, from John Hindraker at Powerline...
Quote: Kevin Tillman, an antiwar activist who has posted on far-left web sites, denounced the military for deceiving his family about the circumstances of his brother's death:
Or this, from George Orwell's 1984 where Winston is composing a government propaganda speech...
Quote:He might turn the speech into the usual denunciation of traitors and thought-criminals, but that was a little too obvious, while to invent a victory at the front, or some triumph of over-production in the Ninth Three-Year Plan, might complicate the records too much.
What was needed was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready-made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed.
Today he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.
(nod to Greenwald at salon for much of what I've just noted above)
Blatham:
Quote:snood
Your desire and hope for an honest and rational accounting (from those people you've named) of the Pentagon's behavior and the administration's behavior regarding this matter won't be realized
I guess not. But, short of "honest and rational", I thought they might at least have the cojones to make a few gratuitous jingoistic noises. Overestimated 'em, looks like.
snood wrote:Blatham:
Quote:snood
Your desire and hope for an honest and rational accounting (from those people you've named) of the Pentagon's behavior and the administration's behavior regarding this matter won't be realized
I guess not. But, short of "honest and rational", I thought they might at least have the cojones to make a few gratuitous jingoistic noises. Overestimated 'em, looks like.
We keep doing that! I swear, if I do not smarten up and remember how effectively crippled these folks are as autonomous thinkers, I shall hire Bill Bennett's dominatrix to whip me into frenzy.
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