So you want to go and serve your country?
Pat Tillman
There was yet another problem, this time from within the US military, in the person of Pat Tillman, a football star and American hero who naively enlisted to ‘serve his country’ but then discovered the war was not what it seemed, and wasn’t bashful about telling anyone who would listen, “This war is so f***ing illegal”, and much more. Tillman was killed when his little battalion encountered merciless gunfire by Iraqi terrorists. His body was shipped home in celebration, with a post-humous Silver Star, the military comforting the aggrieved family.
But then, an extraordinarily brave young soldier, disobeying direct orders, secretly informed Tillman’s family that Tillman was killed by “friendly fire”, causing a huge PR mess. The military admitted they lied to the family, but the story repeatedly changed. First, Tillman’s death was at the hand of the enemy in battle (from a distance of 100 meters), then by ‘friendly fire’ in battle (from a distance of 100 meters), but then it was admitted there had been no enemy in the vicinity and no battle at all. Explanations as to how ‘friendly fire’ could ensue in such a circumstance were all ridiculed. The matter became increasingly incendiary when more details came to light: (a) Tillman was killed by 3 closely-grouped shots in the forehead at very close range; (b) almost immediately after his death, Tillman’s uniform, body armor, personal diary and many other personal items were burned, the military claiming this was merely a matter of ‘hygiene’; (c) Messages were leaked where military lawyers celebrated their ability to derail and prevent investigations into Tillman’s death.[27]
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The only other salient fact is that Tillman would soon have returned to the US and had already arranged a two or three-hour interview with Noam Chomsky where he planned to reveal everything he had learned about the illegalities of the war, the atrocities committed by the US military, and other inconvenient truths. The word on the street was that he and Chomsky planned to team up to conduct a long series of cross-country speeches to inform the American public about the truth of the war. We cannot absolutely prove that Pat Tillman was executed by his own military to silence him, though the US military and the CIA have a long-documented history of this. But the gunshot wounds didn’t precisely fit the Military’s description of “mistakenly gunned down by his fellow Rangers”, and three closely-grouped shots to the middle of the forehead at point-blank range wouldn’t normally be classified as “friendly”.[31]
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