[Peace-discuss] Fw: Tillman Family is McChrystal-Clear on Obama Afghan Pick

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Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 9:44 AM
Subject: Tillman Family is McChrystal-Clear on Obama Afghan Pick


> Tillman Family is McChrystal-Clear
>
> By Dave Zirin
> The Nation
> May 14, 2009
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/zirin2
>
> When NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman died at
> the hands of US troops in a case of "friendly fire,"
> the spin machine at the Pentagon went into overdrive.
> Rumsfeld and company couldn't have their most high-
> profile soldier dying in such an inelegant fashion,
> especially with the release of those pesky photos from
> Abu Ghraib hitting the airwaves. So an obscene lie was
> told to Tillman's family, his friends and the American
> public. The chicken-hawks in charge, whose only
> exposure to war was watching John Wayne movies, claimed
> that he died charging a hill and was cut down by the
> radical Islamic enemies of freedom. In the weeks
> preceding his death, Tillman was beginning to question
> what exactly he was fighting for, telling friends that
> he believed the war in Iraq was " [expletive] illegal."
> He may not have known what he was fighting for, but
> it's now clear what he died for: public relations.
> Today, after five years, six investigations and two
> Congressional hearings, questions still linger about
> how Tillman died and why it was covered up.
>
> Now the man who greased the chain of command that
> orchestrated this great deception is prepared to assume
> total control of US operations in Afghanistan: Lt. Gen.
> Stanley McChrystal. It was McChrystal who approved
> Tillman's posthumous Silver Star, a medal given
> explicitly for combat, even though he later testified
> that he "suspected" friendly fire.
>
> Yet despite this, both Democrats and Republicans are
> rushing to heap praise on McChrystal, including Sen.
> John McCain. It was McCain who rushed to speak at
> Tillman's funeral and then, when the cover-up became
> known, pledged to help the Tillman family expose the
> truth. McCain later turned his back on the Tillmans
> when they raised the volume and demanded answers. As
> Pat's mother, Mary Tillman, said last year, "He
> definitely eased out of the situation. He didn't
> blatantly say he wouldn't help us, it's just that it
> became clear that he kind of drifted away."
>
> And now the Tillman family, amidst bipartisan praise
> for Obama's new general, must once again raise the
> inconvenient truth.
>
> Pat's father, Pat Tillman Sr., told the Associated
> Press, "I do believe that guy participated in a
> falsified homicide investigation."
>
> Mary Tillman, who excoriated McChrystal in her book,
> Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman,
> said, "It is imperative that Lt. Gen. McChrystal be
> scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings."
>
> Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in response:
>
>    We feel terrible for what the Tillman family went
>    through, but this matter has been investigated
>    thoroughly by the Pentagon, by the Congress, by
>    outside experts, and all of them have come to the
>    same conclusion: that there was no wrongdoing by
>    Gen. McChrystal.
>
> Morrell's statement has more spin than a washing
> machine powered by a V-8 engine. McChrystal has never
> explained why the early reports of Tillman's death were
> covered up, why his clothes and field journal were
> burned and destroyed on the scene or why Pat's brother
> Kevin, serving alongside him in the Rangers, was lied
> to on the spot. Even the cover-up was covered up. This
> should be a cause for dismissal--or indictment--not
> promotion.
>
> What particularly rankles about Obama's choice of
> McChrystal, whose background is in the nefarious and
> shadowy world of "black ops," is that his actions in
> the Tillman cover-up feel emblematic instead of
> exceptional.
>
> When an anonymous Army interrogator "at great personal
> risk" blew the whistle to Esquire in August 2006 on an
> extensive torture enterprise at Camp Nama, he described
> the then unknown McChrystal as being an overseer who
> knew the ugly truth. Torture at Camp Nama included
> using ice water to induce hypothermia. It was not a
> rogue operation unless we consider Generals like
> McChrystal "rogues." As Esquire reported:
>
>    Once, somebody brought it up with the colonel.
>    "Will [the Red Cross] ever be allowed in here?" And
>    he said absolutely not. He had this directly from
>    General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no
>    way that the Red Cross could get in--they won't
>    have access and they never will. This facility was
>    completely closed off to anybody investigating,
>    even Army investigators.
>
> Later in the piece, when asked where the colonel was
> getting his orders from the interrogator said, "I
> believe it was a two-star general. I believe his name
> was General McChrystal. I saw him there a couple of
> times."
>
> Clearly President Obama is trying to "own" the war in
> Afghanistan: upping the troop levels, making it his
> "central front" in the battle against terrorism and now
> placing his own general in charge. But the president is
> also disappointing a generation of antiwar activists
> who voted for him expecting an end to imperial
> adventures and torture sanctioned by the executive
> branch. Now a man who should perhaps be on trial at the
> Hague is in charge of Afghanistan. Obama needs to know
> it's not just the Tillmans who are enraged by this
> terrible choice.
>
> [Dave Zirin is the author of ?A People?s History of
> Sports in the United States? (The New Press) Receive
> his column every week by emailing
> dave at edgeofsports.com. Contact him at
> edgeofsports at gmail.com.]
>
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