Pat Tillman (left) and brother Kevin
It’s long been said that the first casualty of war is the truth. When it comes to the tragic Pat Tillman story, truer words were never spoken.
All-star NFL football player. Free spirit. Square-jawed jock. Patriot. All-around good guy. Pat Tillman was all of the above. When he and his brother Kevin enlisted in the Army in 2002, shocking their friends and family, even the White House stood up and saluted. Upon learning that Pat Tillman was to be sent to the frontlines in Afghanistan, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent out a paternalistic memo to the Secretary of the Army, stating “we might want to keep an eye on him.”
By now we know the recoiling hollowness of Rumsfeld’s words. On patrol in April 2004, Cpl. Pat Tillman was shot to death by his own men, in an outrageous—and still baffling—case of friendly fire. The official military term is “fratricide”, though there was nothing brotherly about what Tillman’s Army band of brothers did to him—either then or in the six years since his death.
Much as many Americans would like to bury the long-running wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, director Amir Bar-Lev’s explosive film The Tillman Story brings the war home, front-and-center. For Tillman’s mother, Mary “Dannie” Tillman, she and her vociferous family willfully enlisted to make the documentary to “set the record straight.” It’s a story that, for the Tillmans and countless others, has become a heart-broken record after more than eight years of war.
When Tillman joined the Army, walking away from a million-dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals, the media shot off a salvo of praise for this seemingly gung-ho American. In death, he was eulogized by President Bush as a “fierce defender of liberty.” Of course, those tributes were delivered when his death was initially reported as a result of enemy fire. He was posthumously awarded a Silver Star for valor, and the nation, led by the flag-waving Fox News, rushed to memorialize him as a fallen hero.
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to Arlington. To start with was Tillman’s expressed wish not to be given a military funeral. Cracks in the propaganda myth started appearing before the plaster had dried. By late 2004, the Tillman family began to suspect that the Army was lying to them about Pat’s death. Partially through their own investigation, corroborated by witnesses, the family determined that not only was their son killed by friendly fire, but that military authorities had covered up the facts in the case from day one.
Through interviews with former members of Tillman’s Army Ranger unit, as well as recent footage from the Afghan mountainside where he was killed, Bar-Lev methodically reconstructs the chaotic firefight that took place on April 22, 2004. Since there was no Taliban in the area, when the smoke clears, it becomes horrifically apparent that Tillman’s death came at the hands of jumpy, trigger-happy members of his own unit. To date, no individual has been held responsible for his murder, while only one higher-up—Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger—was punished for the cover-up.
In what amounts to salt in the wounds, the makers of The Tillman Story recently lost their battle to get its rating switched from “R” to the more box-office-friendly “PG-13” —chiefly because of its barrage of F-bombs. Audiences who do see this powerful and poignant film will quickly realize that the real obscenity is what happened to Tillman, from his outrageous death to the cowardly and disgraceful burial of the facts.
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Read more by Thomas Delapa:
Thomas is a film studies instructor and critic currently living in Denver. He has written on film, theater and the arts for such publications as the Chicago Tribune, Westword (Denver), Boulder Weekly and the Pulitzer newspapers (Chicago). He has curated film programs at the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art-Denver, and has taught undergraduate film at the University of Colorado, the University of Denver, Regis University and the Colorado Film School. In 2006, he received first- and second-place awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Colorado chapter, for Arts and Entertainment Criticism. He also has been film critic for such NPR affiliates as WBEZ-FM in Chicago and KUVO-FM in Denver. His past work in the film and television field includes positions at the Museum of the Moving Image and the Public Broadcasting Service in New York City and Charles Fries Productions in Los Angeles. His two Master’s degrees are from New York University (Cinema Studies) and the University of Chicago (Social Sciences). You can follow his film blog, Deeper Into Movies, at http://deepintomovies.blogspot.com/ and on Facebook.
” To date, no individual has been held responsible for his murder, while only one higher-up—Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger—was punished for the cover-up.”
Gen. McChrystal was the general officer most directly involved in the cover-up (he was Cheney & Rumsfeld’s “go to” general while he commanded JSOC from 2003 to 2008). But, after the 2006 elections when the Democrats took back control of Congress, the Democrats continued the Army and Bush administration cover-up to protect McChrystal and others involved.
If your curious I’ve written about this in depth at http://www.feralfirefighter.blogspot.com (see “The [Untold] Tillman Story” and “The Emperor’s General”)
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They did keep a close eye on him, and when they found out he was vehemently opposed to the illegal invasion of Iraq and was planning on not only leading the anti-war movement at home but also campaigning for John Kerry, they decided it was easier to kill him over there than deal with him over here. His death was a murder, plain and simple.
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Chris Hedges, who was a war correspospondent, has been to Occupy at Wall Street and is taking heat for his stand with OCCUPY. I met him years ago as he spoke on his book WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING. I also read Hedges’ book ALL YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT WAR. Both books support the Pat Tillman story. Hedges said, “They all lie.” The war is undergirded by the military and media in propaganda to get the country to support the effort. Once the country awakens to the lie about war then all the support fades away. It appears that politics are going the same way. Jeffrey Sachs’ book THE PRICE OF CIVILIZATION adds politics to this deception.Who will stand up for democracy?
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