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International News Title: The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman Pat Tillman was a straight-A football hero who'd turned down a $3.6 million NFL scholarship to join the Army and fight AlQaeda after 9/11, much to the public delight of Bush and Rumsfeld. Following training he was sent to Iraq, where he didn't like what he saw; a fellow soldier remembers, "He said, 'You know, this war is so f-ing illegal. And we all said, Yeah. That's who he was. He totally was against Bush. Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry. "He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author." (ref) His mother Mary Tillman said a friend of Pat's arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan. After his tour of duty in Iraq, he was sent to Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter he was killed; the military trumpeted his 'sacrifice' and heroism under fire. In fact we learned five weeks later he had been killed during a particularly murky 'friendly fire' incident. "According to testimony, Tillman, who along with others on the hill waved his arms and yelled 'Cease fire!', set off a smoke grenade to identify his group as fellow soldiers. There was a momentary lull in the firing, and he and the soldier next to him, thinking themselves safe, relaxed, stood up and started talking. But the shooting resumed. Tillman was hit in the wrist with shrapnel and in his body armor with numerous bullets. The soldier next to him testified, "I could hear the pain in his voice as he called out, 'Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat f*ing Tillman, dammit!' He said this over and over until he stopped, having been hit by three bullets in the forehead, killing him." A soldier who on April 23 burned Tillman's bullet riddled body armor- which would have been evidence in a friendly-fire investigation, testified that he did so because there was no doubt it was friendly fire that killed Tillman. Two days later, Tillman's uniform and vest also were burned because they were soaked in blood and considered 'a biohazard'. In testimony on Nov. 14, the officer who conducted the first investigation said that he thought some Rangers could have been charged with "criminal intent". The shooters saw only "shapes", an Army Ranger-appointed investigator wrote, and all of them directed bursts of machine gun fire "without positively identifying the shapes." However, the medical examiner said Tillman had been killed by "three head shots to the forehead in a pattern about the size of a half dollar". That doesn't sound like the chaotic and confused firing described by the investigators. In fact, it sounds like an expert sniper's shooting. And if the shooter could do that, it's obvious they saw who they were killing. The whole thing stinks. "There have been so many discrepancies so far that it's hard to know what to believe," said his mother, Mary Tillman, a San Jose teacher. "There are too many murky details." The files the family received from the Army in March were heavily censored. "Pat had high ideals about the country; that's why he did what he did" ... "The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting." Pat's father, Patrick Tillman Sr., a San Jose lawyer, said he is furious about what he found in the volumes of witness statements and investigative documents the Army has given to the family. He decried what he calls a "botched homicide investigation" and blames high-ranking Army officers for presenting "outright lies" to the family and to the public. "After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," Patrick Tillman said. "They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy." Patrick Tillman Sr. believes he will never get the truth, and he says he is resigned to that now. But he wants everyone in the chain of command, from Tillman's direct supervisors to the one-star general who conducted the latest investigation, to face discipline for "dishonorable acts." He also said the soldiers who killed his son have not been adequately punished. "Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore," he said. "Pat's dead, and this isn''t going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has." Again: the medical examiner's report said Tillman was killed by three bullets closely spaced in the forehead. He never had that meeting with Chomsky. I wonder what he would have told him. "This war is so f**ing illegal"... ? James Buchanan wrote in the European American News on Sept 29, 2005: "... it seems likely that the Bush administration caught wind of the meeting between Chomsky and Tillman. This situation would almost certainly lead to a massive publicity incident with headlines of 'Hero Condemns Iraq War and Bush'. This pending disaster for the neocons may have driven them to take extreme measures. Obviously the neocons didn't want a war hero turning against George Bush (who evaded serving in the Vietnam War when it was his turn to fight). The big question is: Would the neocons order the assassination of a disgruntled war hero to avoid a publicity fiasco?" Good question. American Hero opposed to the Iraq War. Three closely spaced shots to the forehead. Murky coverup. Stonewalling. No answers. Accident?
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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8O41NK80&show_article=1&image=large Tillman died in Afghanistan's Paktia province, along the Pakistan border, after his platoon was ordered to split into two groups and one of the units began firing. Tillman and an Afghan with him were killed. A specialist at the time of his death, Tillman was posthumously promoted to corporal.
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