The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon has released more documents regarding the investigation into the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Tillman, who gave up playing for the Arizona Cardinals to sign up with the military after Sept. 11, was killed by his own troops in 2004, but Army officials cooked up a bullshit a story about how he died charging enemy insurgents.
This is what we call propaganda. And it’s disgraceful.
The story notes:
The documents also shed new light on Tillman’s last moments.
It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O’Neal, who was at Tillman’s side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting “Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!” again and again.
But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.
The chaplain said that O’Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman’s side, “crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, ‘Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God’s not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling …”
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2007.
Yes! An atheist in a foxhole! The maxim is wrong!
Score one (dead guy) for our side!
James: HEATHEN!!!
The specter of big, tough military men who are such pussies that they can’t even tell the truth is truly revolting.
(1) Military dudes are supposed to be tough.
(2) Lying about basic facts of somebody dying is what WIMPS do.
Funny that three-star generals, who ask young men to die for their country on the battlefield, can’t be trusted not to lie about the circumstances of those deaths.
From the latest AP article:
SAN FRANCISCO – As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman’s side started praying. “I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me,” Sgt. Bryan O’Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. “He said something like, ‘Hey, O’Neal, why are you praying? God can’t help us now.'”
Tillman’s intent, O’Neal said, was to “more or less put my mind straight about what was going on at the moment.”
“He said, ‘I’ve got an idea to help get us out of this,'” said O’Neal, who was an 18-year-old Army Ranger in Tillman’s unit when the former NFL player was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004.
O’Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting “Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!” again and again when he was killed, O’Neal said.
A chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman’s death later described this exchange to investigators conducting a criminal probe of the incident. But O’Neal strongly disputes portions of the chaplain’s testimony, outlined in some 2,300 pages of transcripts released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The chaplain told investigators that O’Neal said Tillman was harsh in his last moments, snapping, ‘Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God’s not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling …”
“He never would have called me ‘sniveling,'” O’Neal said. “I don’t remember ever speaking to this chaplain, and I find this characterization of Pat really upsetting. He never once degraded me. He’s the only person I ever worked for who didn’t degrade anyone. He wasn’t that sort of person.”
The chaplain’s name is blacked out in the documents.
….
It sounds like the chaplain exaggerated the harshness of Tillman’s final exchange. Could it be the chaplain was incensed by Tillman’s atheistic comments?