WAS PAT TILLMAN KILLED FOR HIS POLITICS?

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Case of former pro football player's
friendly-fire death to be reopened

Gen. Peter Pace said the Army was launching a criminal investigation into the April 2004 death of Tillman — an Army Ranger shot by fellow soldiers in what previous military reviews had concluded was an accident — because the Defense Department's inspector general determined it was an additional step that needed to be taken.

A Pentagon official told The Associated Press on Saturday that a criminal investigation would focus on possible charges of negligent homicide. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the new investigation had not formally begun.

And

Tillman died on April 22, 2004, when he was struck by gunfire during a firefight along a canyon road near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Army said at the time that the barrage of bullets came from enemy fire.

A report by the Army later found that troops with Tillman knew at the time that friendly fire had killed the football star. Officers destroyed critical evidence and concealed the truth from Tillman's brother, also an Army Ranger, who was nearby, the report found.

Click here for the rest.

Right after he was killed, I was reading comments about it over at Eschaton and one guy, a Vietnam vet, was asserting that Tillman was fragged by his fellow troops. I pointed out that he was engaging in speculation, that there was no known evidence to even suggest such a thing. He agreed with me, but said fragging was a distinct possibility: Tillman, we all believed at that point, was a hyperpatriotic, gung-ho, fightin' he-man, the kind of reckless nut who might endanger his entire unit with his get-them-ragheads behavior. After all, the press releases coming out of the Pentagon painted the guy as some sort of modern day Rambo, all badass and ready to kill or die for his country; the fragging scenario certainly seemed possible.

That was then. Now I wonder if this vet guy had it right but for the wrong reasons.

It seems that the Pentagon willfully covered up the circumstances surrounding Tillman's death; important evidence was destroyed almost immediately, and news of that didn't come out for months. Of course, they're calling it all a mistake, but then these are the same guys behind the Jessica Lynch show, and are not to be trusted. Compounding matters is that Tillman turned out to be not some sort of Rambo, but a patriotic left-winger who read Noam Chomsky and believed that the Iraq war "is so fucking illegal."

Is it possible that Tillman was fragged by fellow soldiers, not because of a wild blood lust, but because of a perceived lack of loyalty to his unit, that is, because of his left-wing politics? This is, of course, pure speculation. But there are many unanswered questions about his death, and the institution reopening the investigation, the Pentagon, has already lied about it. There's a good chance we'll never know, exactly, what happened, but I think I've managed to show that there were motive, means, and opportunity, the three pillars on which all murder prosecutions stand, suggesting that Tillman's death may have been more than a "negligent homicide."

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