Tillman Family is McChrystal-Clear
By Dave Zirin
The Nation
May 14, 2009
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/zirin2
When NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman died at
the hands of US troops in a case of "friendly fire,"
the spin machine at the Pentagon went into overdrive.
Rumsfeld and company couldn't have their most high-
profile soldier dying in such an inelegant fashion,
especially with the release of those pesky photos from
Abu Ghraib hitting the airwaves. So an obscene lie was
told to Tillman's family, his friends and the American
public. The chicken-hawks in charge, whose only
exposure to war was watching John Wayne movies, claimed
that he died charging a hill and was cut down by the
radical Islamic enemies of freedom. In the weeks
preceding his death, Tillman was beginning to question
what exactly he was fighting for, telling friends that
he believed the war in
He may not have known what he was fighting for, but
it's now clear what he died for: public relations.
Today, after five years, six investigations and two
Congressional hearings, questions still linger about
how Tillman died and why it was covered up.
Now the man who greased the chain of command that
orchestrated this great deception is prepared to assume
total control of US operations in
Tillman's posthumous Silver Star, a medal given
explicitly for combat, even though he later testified
that he "suspected" friendly fire.
Yet despite this, both Democrats and Republicans are
rushing to heap praise on McChrystal, including Sen.
John McCain. It was McCain who rushed to speak at
Tillman's funeral and then, when the cover-up became
known, pledged to help the Tillman family expose the
truth. McCain later turned his back on the Tillmans
when they raised the volume and demanded answers. As
Pat's mother, Mary Tillman, said last year, "He
definitely eased out of the situation. He didn't
blatantly say he wouldn't help us, it's just that it
became clear that he kind of drifted away."
And now the Tillman family, amidst bipartisan praise
for Obama's new general, must once again raise the
inconvenient truth.
Pat's father, Pat Tillman Sr., told the Associated
Press, "I do believe that guy participated in a
falsified homicide investigation."
Mary Tillman, who excoriated McChrystal in her book,
Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman,
said, "It is imperative that Lt. Gen. McChrystal be
scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings."
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in response:
We feel terrible for what the Tillman family went
through, but this matter has been investigated
thoroughly by the Pentagon, by the Congress, by
outside experts, and all of them have come to the
same conclusion: that there was no wrongdoing by
Gen. McChrystal.
Morrell's statement has more spin than a washing
machine powered by a V-8 engine. McChrystal has never
explained why the early reports of Tillman's death were
covered up, why his clothes and field journal were
burned and destroyed on the scene or why Pat's brother
Kevin, serving alongside him in the Rangers, was lied
to on the spot. Even the cover-up was covered up. This
should be a cause for dismissal--or indictment—not promotion.
What particularly rankles about Obama's choice of
McChrystal, whose background is in the nefarious and
shadowy world of "black ops," is that his actions in
the Tillman cover-up feel emblematic instead of exceptional.
When an anonymous Army interrogator "at great personal
risk" blew the whistle to Esquire in August 2006 on an
extensive torture enterprise at
the then unknown McChrystal as being an overseer who
knew the ugly truth. Torture at
using ice water to induce hypothermia. It was not a
rogue operation unless we consider Generals like
McChrystal "rogues." As Esquire reported:
Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel.
"Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?" And
he said absolutely not. He had this directly from
General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no
way that the Red Cross could get in--they won't
have access and they never will. This facility was
completely closed off to anybody investigating,
even Army investigators.
Later in the piece, when asked where the colonel was
getting his orders from the interrogator said, "I
believe it was a two-star general. I believe his name
was General McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of times."
Clearly President Obama is trying to "own" the war in
"central front" in the battle against terrorism and now
placing his own general in charge. But the president is
also disappointing a generation of antiwar activists
who voted for him expecting an end to imperial
adventures and torture sanctioned by the executive
branch. Now a man who should perhaps be on trial at the
Hague is in charge of
it's not just the Tillmans who are enraged by this terrible choice.
Dave Zirin is the author of "A People's History of Sports in the
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