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Pat Tillman, who gave up his pro football career to enlist in the U.S. Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, is killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. The news that Tillman, age 27, was mistakenly gunned down by his fellow Rangers, rather than enemy forces, was initially covered up by the U.S. military.
Patrick Daniel Tillman was born the oldest of three brothers on November 6, 1976, in San Jose, California. He played linebacker for Arizona State University, where during his senior year he was named Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year. In 1998, Tillman was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals. He became the team’s starting safety as well as one of its most popular players. In 2000, he broke the team record for tackles with 224. In May 2002, Tillman turned down a three-year, multi-million-dollar deal with the Cardinals and instead, prompted by the events of 9/11, joined the Army along with his brother Kevin, a minor-league baseball player. The Tillman brothers were assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment in Fort Lewis, Washington, and did tours in Iraq in 2003, followed by Afghanistan the next year.
On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman was killed by gunfire while on patrol in a rugged area of eastern Afghanistan. The Army initially maintained that Tillman and his unit were ambushed by enemy forces. Tillman was praised as a national hero, awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart medals and posthumously promoted to corporal. Weeks later, Tillman’s family learned his death had been accidental. His parents publicly criticized the Army, saying they had been intentionally deceived by military officials who wanted to use their son as a patriotic poster boy. They believed their son’s death was initially covered up by military officials because it could’ve undermined support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A criminal investigation was eventually launched into the case and in 2007 the Army censured retired three-star general Philip Kensinger, who was in charge of special operations at the time of Tillman’s death, for lying to investigators and making other mistakes. “Memorandums of concern” were also sent to several brigadier generals and lower-ranking officers who the Army believed acted improperly in the case.
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A retired three-star general was censured!
Now that’ll sure show them not to do such fabrications.
A patriot, a warrior, who gave up a promising career and his very life, believing in the American Dream, which no longer existed.
How tragic.
Yep, like a lot of us, he was driven to volunteering for national service not realizing the majority of what he was taking in was, in essence, jingoistic misinformation. I was in Afghanistan for a few months supporting the war effort as a contractor. I got a birds-eye view on the action while assisting an SF unit during the opening phases of “OP Anaconda” and it dawned on me it was going to be a long-term waste of time trying to “democratize” people who weren’t interested in Western ideology – I already knew Afghanistan’s reputation as a graveyard of empires.
Packed my stuff up after 3 months and left. The MI unit I supported complained and even attempted to stop me on the tarmac but they didn’t have the authority to keep me off the plane by literally arresting me at gunpoint.
so long ago. wasn’t it three shots to the forehead, close range?
It was a friendly cross-fire fire accident quite possibly started by a disgruntled Afghan Taliban sympathizer. “Green on blue” incidents were common and I despised and mistrusted locals who’d act as interpreters or the police, who were frequently stupid and corrupt. There were a select few who saw Americans as infidels with no good reason to be there. Those were the one you didn’t turn your back on.
US troops have no reason to be in any country except the US. And the majority of those should be on the border. The fact that the majority of people aren’t clamouring for that tells alot about the state of the union.
Pat Tillman was well known for a being a bully and an asshole from high school on.
He was either fragged or purposely put in an extremely compromised position during a firefight.
His company was tired of his shit and needlessly putting them in bad situations that would get them killed.
Dude was mentally unstable. Who leaves the NFL for combat? Someone that is unstable and thinks they are above bad things happening to them and wants control of other people.
I don’t want to hear all this “patriot” shit, he got what he asked for….a bridge named after him. Yaaay! Ameeeeerica…FUCK YEA !
Show me on the doll where the bad bully shoved you in a locker.
Great bait post though.
Like you would know anything about how a RGR company thinks or operates.
Did you help with the mental diagnosis on Trump too?
l have no idea what the British army has to with pat tillman, but I do know what it was like to walk around quang-tri provence during TET in 1968 being shot at and scared shitless, son.
It did not feel patriotic and brave.
RGR is short for Ranger, of which Pat was a member of that Regiment. American, not british.
Personally, I could GAF about your opinion about war and men who wage it if all you did was the bare minimum after getting drafted.
And while I appreciate your walking around during Tet, Pat volunteered three times, to be where he was at, not to mention what he gave up to be there.
You think he was crazy and a bully, fine, present proof. You think other Batt boys shot their Sgt, go ahead, give me a line of reasoning. You have no clue what life is like in a RGR Bn.
And I damn sure I ain’t your son, bitch.
RIP
RLTW
SS
No such thing as friendly fire.
Yossarian had it right: the enemy is anyone that is going to get you killed.
ZFG,out.
I agree.
I don’t care how rah, rah, n is, or what a bad ass warrior he is.
‘Nam and Afghanistan were both a disgusting waste of lives.
Yes I was drafted and trying to stay alive during TET, 20 klics from the DMZ required more than the bare minimum.
Seeing and smelling death never goes away and I am damaged because of it.
Volunteering 3 times so Halliburton can make billions tells me Tillman was addicted Adrenalin and put that before his family, to me, that’s crazy. Who or what was he protecting?
Peace.
So basically you are talking out your ass.
Figured.
Boomer.
You ought to know about the fog of war and how easy it is to end up with blue on blue. War is a shit show and it is an even bigger shit show when your coms are down and everyone is jacked on the rush. They had to hush it up as that is a big fuck up of the highest order when you have that kind of patriotic sacrifice for nothing. He gave up the American dream to get schwacked by the same team and that is something a lot of commanders will give a nut to hide from public eyes.
Everyone that volunteered versus being voluntold will eventually have that wake up call that it is never about protecting the people and the Constitution. It is about protecting profits and the status quo. Serve long enough and whether or not one admits it the signs are there that it aint about freedom and God and country.
I had the fortunate experience in my time in the service to have some SF Nam vets mentor me and a pretty close knit MOS field where most everyone was relatively reliable and the shit bags got sorted including the brass.
I know my friends that died in A-stan and Iraq and Africa did not do it for Uncle Sam. I cannot speak to others I did not serve with, but it is probably a pretty good deduction that there are some adrenalin junkies in certain career fields as I was, and I am 100% sure that is what separated us from the rest of the military: desire to complete the mission and succeed where failure was more probable than success. It does not always go the way of success as Pat’s case showed, but fuck it dude, our fates are set. We can run and hide if we like, but we are not going to live any longer than we are supposed to.
I can be sour about being used. I can be sour about injuries that are permanent. I can be sour about losing friends over the last 21 years for nothing in third world shit heaps. I can be sour that our country is a giant colostomy bag of corruption and idiocy. What I wont be sour about is getting to see first hand the best and worst of this country for whatever we reason we got sent to do stupid shit in whatever the stupid operation name was.
I am not going to shit on a man I did not know personally. I can shit on the way he went and how it got fubar, but dwelling on the past is not conducive to avoiding past mistakes. Filling in events with our unconscious personal bias(es) will never bring truth to an event though. The truth is somewhere in the center of the circle of events and we will never truly know anything beyond what our observations lead to discerning.
It is too bad politicians and flag officers never learn from past mistakes.
ZFG, out.
P.S. I just hope I get to rain steel down on some corrupt cunts at some point.
“One has been a bad spectator of life if one has not seen the hand that kills.”
Nietzsche