Pat Tillman

Recruitment tool, anyone?

Mary Tillman thinks so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwxM42Tl7Jo

The gross coverup of Pat Tillman's death has far-reaching effect on our country.

Call me a skeptic, but who was a better face of recruitment for the "War on Terror" but this handsome, strapping, intelligent football player?

It was known by the Army Rangers that his death was by friendly fire the day of his memorial service which was a patriotic call to arms broadcast throughout the nation. Even I, not particularly a fan of Tillman's, football OR the Army, listened to it largely because Jim Rome was speaking!

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=tillmanpart1

The Army knew what they were doing. By the time they awarded Tillman a Silver Star, the Army had burned his uniform, his diary, and altered the documents submitted nominating him for that award.

His family's statement reads in part:

The Army can still not cite a single instance of any Silver Star, before Pat, that was awarded in the case of fratricide, when the subject of the award was never fired upon by the enemy.

No one who knew Pat ever doubted his physical or moral courage.

But the award of the Silver Star appears more than anything to be part of a cynical design to conceal the real events from the family ­ but most especially, from the public ­ while exploiting the death of our beloved Pat as a recruitment poster.
http://counterpunch.org/tillman03272007.html

9/11 seemed to be the sole reason that thousands of young people enlisted in the military. I hear those stories every day. Was 9/11 not enough? I'm not naive enough to suggest that any event thus far was staged as a military recruitment drive, but that the event's existence and subsequent promotion and publicity was enough to spur a rush of young men and women who felt called to serve.

I wonder how many American soldiers' deaths in Iraq were predestined when they first heard or saw a broadcast of Tillman's stern, confident Ranger portrait flashed in ESPN?