Pat Tillman: Victim of Friendly Fire

Approximately 4 to 5 months ago, I was on a train heading to Southern California. On my way, I met a woman on the train and we started a conversation. After some chit-chat, we somehow got diverted onto a topic about the war. This lead the woman to bring up an old family friend that she knew. That neighbor is former Arizona Cardinal and Army Ranger, Pat Tillman. She says that she grew up with the Tillman's and that Pat was very close friends with her son growing up. That day she told me that Pat was not killed due to hostile fire from the Taliban, but rather, that he was shot as the result of friendly fire.She stated that the death of Tillman was used to drum up support for the war effort, using his name as face of heroism. I didn't disbelieve her. I thought it was very plausible, but I had nothing empirical to go by. I just now read an article about how his death was finally ruled as the result of friendly fire.The bottom line is this: The US uses a standard .223 round, whereas, the Taliban typically use a standard .762 round. How is that it takes years to uncover this kind of information when a quick autopsy would have brought the matter in to light? I think its pretty sad that its taken this long to determine the cause of his death and to attribute it to friendly fire.

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"The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." -2^nd Corinthians 10:4-5

first some nitpicks You're mixing the calibre usage up. The M-16 FOW fires a 5.56mm round, and when converted from metric is usually referred to as .223 (even though 5.56mm=.219 inches). The AK47 FOW fires a 7.62mm round. How does it takes years? The Army declared it a combat death and used Tillman's "heroic" image to create propaganda in order to make the war look better. It took Tillman's family pushing the army to release the truth for it to finally re-evaluated as friendly fire.In short a deliberate cover up, not incompetence.Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Actually, Pat Tillman's death is well known in "leftist" circles. The fact that some of us find more interesting than simply the cause of death is that Tillman was extolled as a good patriotic American who quit a lucrative career in the NFL to fight for freedom; what was left out was that in the end he was very much against the war in Iraq and very critical of Bush's policies.

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Kings were put to death long before 21 January 1793. But regicides of earlier times and their followers were interested in attacking the person, not the principle, of the king. They wanted another king, and that was all. It never occurred to them that the throne could remain empty forever. -- Albert Camus

When the president is running a propoganda campaign to deliberately mislead the American public, it is pretty easy for obvious facts to be "accidently lost."The real question is this - why did supposedly moral evangelical Christians support this liar for the last 6 years?

Friendly fire is never a good topic, but would it not be said that in a war situation, friendly fire is somewhat likely to happen? Is friendly fire casualties any worse now than in WWII?

Fratricide is as inevitable as civillian casualities are.Some stats I have foundUS Friendly fire deaths:World War II: 21,000 (16%)
Vietnam war: 8,000 (14%)
Gulf War: 35 (23%)
Invasion of Afghanistan (2002): 4 (13%) (Canadians killed by Americans)For some reason I couldn't quickly find stats for present Iraq war.

As pointed out above, you are making some possible mistakes related to the ammo. In addition, unless you have the recovered bullet there is not much to go on, they both make similar holes. And remember, one of the main suppliers of the Afghans was the US. You are as likely to find a Taliban soldier with a US made weapon as any other except for the fact that the US weapons were far higher maintenance and less reliable.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

5.56 is used with a converter kit. The standard issue is .223. But, I know what you mean. As for the AK, didn't I say 7.62? I have no doubt that Tillman's own chain-of-command deliberately covered up his death for reasons of sparing themselves the wrath of the UCMJ. And I also believe that they used Tillman as a poster child for the war, but at the same time, I don't believe that the higher brass was ever informed of his true death. Again, a simple autopsy would have cleared that up right away. The fact that no one did is just insuperable.Alot of people need to go to tribunal over this, starting first with Tillman's immediate chain-of-command.

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"The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." -2^nd Corinthians 10:4-5

I find it an absurd assertion that President Bush knew exactly how Tillman died. A conspiracy that broad would have had to have come out of the closet long before now. Again, I have no doubt that his immediate chain-of-command knew, but that they covered it up to spare their own arses. If it were really as grand of a conspiracy as you claim, the CID would have falsified their findings to keep the lie going.

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"The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." -2^nd Corinthians 10:4-5

It did. In fact it came out almost at once.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

They are the same round. It is not a matter of conversion.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Friendly fire is going to happen. And in this particular case, it seems completely unreasonable that it happened. Though it is still regrettable in the best case scenario and criminal in the worst, it was explained how it happened in great detail to me.This is coming straight from the testimony to the women I met on the train and from the incident report.Tillman and fellow Rangers were on a convoy going to set up a vehicle check-point. There was a line of Humvess carrying armed Rangers. Tillman was riding with some Afghan, Arabic interpreters. Their vehicle broke down. The ones following behind Tillman to check on his status as the rest of the line got separated. In other words, the main body of the convoy did not know that they had stopped for mechanical reasons. After some tweaks they were back on the road with the other half of the convoy. When they pulled up to the checkpoint they, reportedly immediately took fire as the Rangers assumed the men riding with Tillman were Taliban. They didn't see Tillman in the back seat. Apparently, Tillman was screaming at them, but over the noise of the rifles, Tillman's voice was drowned out. He and his interpreters were struck, killing Tillman.Imagine the horror on the faces of his fellow Rangers when they saw his body strewn in the backseat over their sheer stupidity? First of all, there was literally no reason, whatsoever, to open fire on the vehicle to begin with. Secondly, there was no reason why well-trained Rangers, who are a special operations group, should be so dumb as to engage in that debacle.Maybe I'm missing crucial aspects of the other side of the story, but I still find it hard to believe that it was even possible.

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"The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." -2^nd Corinthians 10:4-5

Well, incompetence or dishonesty. Your choice, I guess.