"I can see it like a movie screen," Baer said. "We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren't in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, `You know, this war is so fucking illegal.' And we all said, `Yeah.' That's who he was. He totally was against Bush."
Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry.
- - "Family Demands Truth," SF Gate/Chronicle
The "Pat" in this little anecdote is none other than right wing war hero and ex-football star Pat Tillman. You know, the one they gave a huge memorial service to after he died that was televised nationally and used as a poster boy for patriotic Americans everywhere -- "look at the sacrifice this man made for his country!" This aspect was played up heavily because, as the article notes, the Abu Ghraib scandal was about to break and the Bush Administration needed someone who could be an inspiration, despite the bad news coming out of both Iraq and Afghanistan.
What they didn't tell us, or his family, and that we know now, is that Tillman was killed by friendly fire; he was killed accidentally, by his own troops. Not exactly the kind of story that the country needed to hear at that time. And so instead, Tillman's corpse was paraded before the cameras and flags were flown and America shed a tear for their fallen comrade (rightly so), unwittingly helping their government propagate another lie to promote their cause. It took five weeks before the family ever knew the true story of his death.
Pat Tillman signed up for the military after 9/11 thinking he was going to fight the real enemy; he ended up serving time in Iraq, wondering why he was fighting in an illegal war. He died in Afghanistan in 2004, long after the Iraq War had taken center stage in George Bush's "War on Terror." Now his mother wants answers, just as Casey Sheahan's mother wants answers, as to why and how their sons died, and what for. Mary Tillman doesn't speak as loudly as Cindy Sheahan, or travel in as famous of circles as she does these days, but I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between these two.
What I really want to know is, why aren't the right wing attackers on Mary Tillman yet, and when is that going to start? Her son, after all, was a Noam Chomsky fan. Sounds like treason to me.