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The Tillman family needs to go away. Nothing but a bunch of ingrates. McChristol is a problem for some reasons,,, but this isn’t it.

He only tried to make their son into a hero rather than a victim. Not smart, but probably better for a true war effort. Same thing happened to Colin Kelly and many other in WWII.

What i especially despise the Till-holes for is is pushing for the ranger who mistakenly shot him to be prosecuted. Utterly depraved and selfish.

When President Bush was still in office, the Tillman family was loudly asserting that Pat Tillman hated George W. Bush (for going into Iraq). Whether that was really Pat Tillman's attitude, I have no way of knowing. But it would be a reason for the media to like the Tillman family.

Friendly fire changed the course of the Civil War--Stonewall Jackson was a victim of friendly fire, and who knows how later battles would have turned out if Jackson had still been around. I read somewhere that Lee thought he would have won at Gettysburg if he had had Jackson there.

The difference between Colin Kelly and Pat Tillman is that Kelly actually did perform a heroic and self sacrificing act by continuing to fly his B-17 even though it was seriously damaged and on fire after being attacked by enemy interceptors that were already attacking Clark Field as his aircraft returned from an abortive bombing mission against Japanese landing forces. By doing so all but one crew member were able to evacuate the aircraft and parachute to safety. For this Kelly was decorated with the DFC, I believe. Kelly had the misfortune to be posthumously accredited with fictional heroics by the press relying on some garbled and fragmentary reports out of the Philippines. The completely unfounded reports of his bomber delivering damaging hits to a Japanese battleship continued to appear in print narratives as late as the 1960’s.

Kelly is constantly refereed to incorrectly as being awarded the first Medal of Honor for the Philippine campaign. The actual first MOH for the Philippines was awarded posthumously to 2nd Lt Alexander Nininger, jr. A USMA graduate as was Kelly, Nininger an officer assigned to the 57th Infantry (Philippine Scouts) , volunteered to fill the place of another officer already a casualty and organized a counterattack that blunted one prong of a Japanese attack on the Abucay Line on Bataan. The official citation states “Though exposed to heavy enemy fire he continued to attack with rifle and hand grenades and succeeded in destroying several enemy groups in fox holes and enemy snipers. Although wounded three times he continued his attacks until he was killed.after pushing alone far within the enemy position. When his body was found after recapture of the position, one enemy officer and two enemy soldiers lay dead around him.” The courage displayed by Nininger and 1st Lt. Willibald Bianchi of the 45th Infantry and Sgt Jose Calugas of the 88th Field Artillery won them the MOH and they and Kelly demonstrated the determined courage of the US forces trapped in the Philippines knowing no help would come for them and and that they were fighting a losing battle.
This is the highest kind of bravery and reflects highly on the pre-war Regular Army.

Tillman, unfortunately, did not have the opportunity to demonstrate his courage and battle. His death illustrates the nightmare of the ‘celebrity’ in uniform. It is the nightmare of any commanding officer that something will befall the celebrity figure. Amicicide is about as bad a something as there is. Unfortunately fabrications of the sort surrounding Tillman's death tend to come to the surface. Especially today with cell phone cameras and the plethora of personal electronic devices. The truth should have been spelled out as soon as it was known. All the attempts to gild the lily did was to seriously embarrass the US Army.