Frank Rich has an interesting column detailing the "Pat Tillman Fantasy". I must admit I did not follow this story too closely when it was in the news .. either the fake story or the real one. Reading Rich's excellent synopsis, therefore, has got my blood boiling. God!! This is much worse than the few snippets that previously caught my attention had led me to believe.
Frank Rich's Column
Some notable quotes:
[Rich begins:] "IT would be a compelling story," Patrick Fitzgerald said of the narrative Scooter Libby used to allegedly mislead investigators in the Valerie Wilson leak case, "if only it were true."
This administration just loves to beguile us with a rollicking good story, truth be damned. The propagandistic fable exposed by the leak case - the apocalyptic imminence of Saddam's mushroom clouds - was only the first of its genre. Given that potboiler's huge success at selling the war, its authors couldn't resist providing sequels once we were in Iraq.
Then the Pat Tillman "story":
Only on a second tour of duty was [Tillman] finally sent into Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, where, on April 22, 2004, he was killed. On April 30, an official Army press release announcing his Silver Star citation filled in vivid details of his last battle. Tillman, it said, was storming a hill to take out the enemy, even as he "personally provided suppressive fire with an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun."
It would be a compelling story, if only it were true.
As most people probably know by now, Pat Tillman was actually killed by friendly fire .. and there may be much more to it than just an "accident".
But Rich's column makes clear that the fake story was clearly more than someone innocently "getting it wrong": the cynical, scheming exploitation of Tillman's death for the administration's purposes just boggles the mind.
Note:
... Gen. John Abizaid, the top American officer in Iraq, and others in his command had learned by April 29, 2004, that friendly fire had killed their star recruit. That was the day before the Army released its fictitious press release of Tillman's hillside firefight and four days before a nationally televised memorial service back home enshrined the fake account of his death.
"The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons," said Patrick Tillman, Pat Tillman's father, who discovered that crucial evidence in the case, including his son's uniform and gear, had been destroyed almost immediately. "This cover-up started within minutes of Pat's death, and it started at high levels."
And why would the administration be interested in such a coverup? Well, because that's what they always do:
It's here where we find a repeat of the same pattern that drove the Valerie Wilson leak a year earlier. Faced with unwelcome news - from the front, from whistle-blowers, from scandal - this administration will always push back with change-the-subject stunts (like specious terror alerts), fake news or, as with Joseph Wilson, smear campaigns. Much as the White House was out to bring down Mr. Wilson because he threatened to expose its prewar hype of Saddam's supposed nuclear prowess, so the Pentagon might have been out to delay or rewrite a story that could be trouble when public opinion on the war itself was just starting to plummet.
Just think of the amount of energy it takes to concoct a fantasy such as this. This is not done lightly or on a whim, or by a few disconnected, rogue individuals. This requires coordination and planning. All the principals have to get their story straight. Appropriate fake details have to be agreed to. The purpose of this is to mislead and beguile and confuse. There is malicious intent in fantasies such as this one. This goes beyond mere incompetence.
GOD I can't wait for the walls to come tumbling down and the true nature of this administration to be revealed. PLEASE ... I hope Harry Reid gets his investigation, and then some!!