Posted on 04/24/2007 10:52:18 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
WASHINGTON - Pat Tillman's brother accused the military Tuesday of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying the football star's death in Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.
"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," Kevin Tillman told a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearing. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide," he said, contending that the military's misstatements amounted to "fraud."
"Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed," said Tillman, who was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened three years ago but didn't see it.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., accused the government of inventing "sensational details and stories" about Pat Tillman's death and the 2003 rescue of Jessica Lynch, perhaps the most famous victims of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
"The government violated its most basic responsibility," said Waxman.
Lynch, then an Army private, was badly injured when her convoy was ambushed in Iraq. She was subsequently rescued by American troops from an Iraqi hospital but the tale of her ambush was changed into a story of heroism on her part.
Still hampered by her injuries, Lynch walked slowly to the witness table and took a seat alongside Tillman's family members.
"The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales," Lynch said.
Kevin Tillman said his family has sought for years to get at the truth about Pat Tillman's death, and have now concluded that they were "being actively thwarted by powers that are more interested in protecting a narrative than getting at the truth and seeing justice is served."
Lawmakers questioned how high up the chain of command the information about Tillman's friendly fire death went, and whether anyone in the White House knew before Tillman's family.
"How high up did this go?" asked Waxman.
Pat Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, said she believed former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must have known. "The fact that he would have died by friendly fire and no one told Rumsfeld is ludicrous," she said.
Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, after his Army Ranger comrades were ambushed in eastern Afghanistan. Rangers in a convoy trailing Tillman's group had just emerged from a canyon where they had been fired upon. They saw Tillman and mistakenly fired on him.
Though dozens of soldiers knew quickly that Tillman had been killed by his fellow troops, the Army said initially that he was killed by enemy gunfire when he led his team to help another group of ambushed soldiers. The family was not told until May 29, 2004, what really happened, a delay the Army has blamed on procedural mistakes.
In questioning what the White House knew, Rep. Elijah Cummings (news, bio, voting record), D-Md., cited a memo written by a top general seven days after Tillman's death warning it was "highly possible" the Army Ranger was killed by friendly fire and making clear his warning should be conveyed to the president. President Bush made no reference to the way Tillman died in a speech delivered two days after the memo was written.
A White House spokesman has said there's no indication Bush received the warning in the memo written April 29, 2004 by then-Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command.
"It's a little disingenuous to think the administration didn't know," Kevin Tillman told the committee. "That's kind of what we hoped you guys would get involved with and take a look," he said.
Mary Tillman told the committee that family members were "absolutely appalled" upon realizing the extent to which they were misled.
"We've all been betrayed ... We never thought they would use him the way they did," she said.
The Tillman family has made similar accusations against the administration and the military before, but has generally shied away from news media attention. The family had never previously appeared together and summarized their criticism and questions in such a public, comprehensive way.
"We shouldn't be allowed to have smoke screens thrown in our face," Mary Tillman said. "You're diminishing their true heroism to write these glorious tales. It's really a disservice to the nation."
"Our family will never be satisfied. We'll never have Pat back," she said. "Something really awful happened. It's your job to find out what happened to him. That's really important."
Last month the military concluded in a pair of reports that nine high-ranking Army officers, including four generals, made critical errors in reporting Tillman's death but that there was no criminal wrongdoing in his shooting.
Tillman's death received worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Lawmakers also planned to press the Pentagon with questions still hovering over Tillman's shooting, including whether a Predator drone was flying overhead when Tillman was killed and whether it videotaped the incident. The military says no such videotape exists.
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Associated Press writer Scott Lindlaw contributed to this report from San Francisco.
Wouldn’t there have be an investigation before an official determination of fratricide was announced?
So what?
Exactly right on the whole - The bottom line is a few details could have been done differently (his Bro should have been told earlier of the likelihood of what happened).
But the bottom line is Ranger Pat Tillman was a hell of a man who died on this shield while taking the fight to the enemy. He was leading from the front. God bless the man.
Disgusting what those on the left are now doing.....And how they are using his death to indirectly help those enemies that Ranger Tillman was taking the fight to when he died.
This is not true. Those on the scene knew within minutes after this engagement what happened.
With that said....what should not be forgotten and what the left and MSM don't want to point out....is that Ranger Pat Tillman was a hell of a man who died on this shield while taking the fight to the enemy. He was leading from the front when he fell. There was an engagement with the enemy in those Mtns....and Ranger Tillman was going to the sound of gunfire when he was killed.
God Bless the man.
Furthermore it is disgusting what those on the left are now doing.....And how they are using his death to indirectly help those enemies that Ranger Tillman was taking the fight to when he died.
The Army made a few mistakes in how they handled this....but there was no "cover-up"....Those suggestions are simply foolishness....and a tool to try and further hurt the current war effort. Disgusting.
This is probably something that should not be surprising when one considers the nature of the Pinheads who work in certain Army occupations.
I do not really understand the lashing out by The Tillman family over this matter though.
If it were not friendly fire, would he be any less dead?
As for Private Lynch, this is a really bad move on her part.
I wonder if she will now testify about how many times she was raped while a POW. This is an incredibly ill advised move on her part.
“Either his brother needs to be educated regarding combat (including,unfortunately,the fact that “friendly fire” incidents *do* happen) or else he needs to be bi*chslapped for being a worthless punk.”
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The brother who you refer to as a punk who needs to be educated concerning combat is the brother who volunteered for the Rangers before Pat did which inspired Pat to give up millions in the NFL and follow his brother into the service. The brother was on the ground in Afghanistan when this tragedy happened. Just out of curiosity- how close to the battle were you?
Depending on your directional orientation (looking east or west) the closest I've ever been to a battle (while an "employee" of the Department of the Army) was Fort Knox,KY or Fort Dix,NJ...and that was a long time ago.
The brother is a punk regardless of his military record.In fact,he,even better than I,should be aware that "friendly fire" incidents happen in modern warfare.
He is every bit as much a punk as are that mental defectives Sheehan and Murtha.
Feel free to disagree if you wish.
You are quite naive to take anything coming from the military PR people at face value. Tillman was not the only case, the Jessica Lynch story was also mostly made up.
Yawn. You and your buddy should head back to DU or wherever you came from.
1. The family is upset because, to cop a phrase from a favorite movie, their rice bowl was broken.
2. Friendly fire deaths are a part of war...my mother lived her entire life not understanding that her brother quite possibly died from allied artillery fire.
3. No body actually 'knows' what took place immediately after any engagement...everybody involved has their own report, their own firm belief, and their own skin to cover: Initial reports are virtually useless!
4. Tillman's team was apparently out in front, not behind the FEBA; operating as they were supposed to be operating but not at a precise assigned location/time/situation. Just a frequency error or a hasty briefing would leave supporting fire and conventional troops in the dark regarding who they'd contacted.
5. In this instance the government/Army/command DID come out to admit they had been wrong...pretty novel if you've ever been there.
6. In the related girl soldier testimony (Jessica Tandy?) I'd stake the farm that we have the media to blame.
IIRC, the official video showed a fairly stress free insertion, grab, extraction...no one outside the Iraqi Army and the NG troops that stumbled into an ambush had the slightest idea of what had taken place or what the lady's condition was before someone tipped the good guys off.
The 'emptied her weapon' crap didn't come from any PIO I heard quoted.
In today's FOX ALERT/CNN bias environment it is really wise to discount the initial reporting, just s*#t can it, because it is all supposition and rumor put forth to fill time on the screen...facts might come later but they do not carry the same emotional value.
And frankly, I think it is far kinder to the family NOT to let them know that their loved one was killed by friendly fire. And, obviously, in order to do that, no one can know it.
These people are out to lynch the WH - probably being coached by Sin-Dee.
Oh, puh-leeze. The only thing being “protected” by this cover-up is some bureaucrat’s rear end.
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