People, Tillmans should have been told the truth

There is a movie, released in 1996, entitled “Courage Under Fire,” starring Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan about an investigation into a friendly fire incident in the Gulf War/Desert Storm operations where a helicopter pilot (Ryan) was killed and a medal winner (Washington) is given the task of uncovering the truth of what happened to her in the sands of Kuwait.
Washington’s character discovers all that he thought he knew was false and the truth, and its subsequent cover-up, was far more harmful to everyone to be continued. People, simply, had to be told the truth.
The story from the Iraq-Afghanistan story that closely parallels this movie plot involves Ranger Pat Tillman, the former MFL player who chucked his gridiron future to follow his desire to perform his patriotic duty. What we were told about his death by the Pentagon has turned out to be utterly and totally false. Yet it was allowed to stand as fact until the truth was forced out, like a bad tooth from a mouth full of infected molars, by Washington Post reporters last December.
Yet no one, a civilian in the Pentagon or someone wearing a uniform, has been punished, reprimanded or even mildly scolded for this egregious act of deliberate deceit. That, of course, would follow the pattern where no one, other than knocked-up privates and hound-sniffing sergeants has been put on trial for torture and atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison. No one with any kind of authoritarian power has been so much as told, “Bad dog!”
Tillman was not only killed by friendly fire, but the exact circumstances of how that occurred resemble nothing like the account of his “heroic” battle against the enemy that allegedly led to his death and this country’s nationwide mourning. The posthumous awarding of the Silver Star was phony and was the testimonies to the events.
According to the Post, “soldiers in Afghanistan knew almost immediately that they had killed Tillman by mistake in what they believed was a firefight with enemies on a tight canyon road (near the Pakistan border). The investigation also revealed that soldiers later burned Tillman’s uniform and body armor.”
“Immediately, the Army kept the soldiers on the ground quiet and told Tillman's family and the public that he was killed by enemy fire while storming a hill, barking orders to his fellow Rangers,” the Post wrote.
The Pentagon, the Post revealed, not only knew of the truth, it deliberately allowed the proceedings to go forth. Tillman’s family is now as mad as a stirred hornet’s nest and well they should be. They were NOT told the truth about Pat Tillman’s sacrifice and that should have been priority number one. After all, it didn’t change the bottom line – Pat Tillman was dead.
There is a question to be asked: Why? Why allow this charade to continue? I suspect it was more for public relations and to use Tillman as a symbol for the country to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a strong figure, square-jawed with a great story – tossing his riches into the river (figuratively) and going to fight for his country. It happened before; the story of Private Jessica Lynch’s rescue in Iraq went from fact to Hollywood fable inside the walls of the Pentagon.
And Pat Tillman was a white guy. I do not discount that aspect at all. Had Pat Tillman been an African-American, I wonder aloud if such homage would have been paid. Would an NBA player (not a star because Tillman was NOT Peyton Manning) who did the same thing have been similarly feted? I don’t think so; and THAT’S the truth. The country took a look at this soldier, saw footage of his time in an NFL uniform and cried its eyes out.
“After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,” said Patrick Tillman Sr. to the 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.
“Maybe lying’s not a big deal anymore. Pat’s dead, and this isn’t going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has.”
Sadly, President Bush perpetuated this fraud when he delivered a taped memorial message about Tillman at an Arizona Cardinal game prior to the November 2004 elections.
Had the complete truth been known immediately, the reaction would probably have been one of sadness for the family and anger toward others for how senseless Tillman’s death was. Merely having put himself into harm’s way for a cause he believed in made Pat Tillman a hero.
But it did not excuse the military brass and Pentagon officials for concocting such a fabrication to tell his family and the American public.
People, simply, have to be told the truth. Without it, nothing we do holds a drop of moral consciousness.