Was Pat Tillman Murdered?

* He was shot three times in the forehead at close range with an American M-16.
* This was after he was shot in the chest, legs and hand.
* And this was after he screamed to the "friendlies" that he was Pat Tillman and please stop shooting him.
* But they didn't; they executed him.
* They were Americans.
* There wasn't even an "enemy" around; not only was nobody shot by "enemy fire," no equipment was shot by "enemy fire."
* "Members of Tillman's unit burned his body armor and uniform in an apparent attempt to hide the fact that he was killed by friendly fire."
* Army medical examiners tried to get a criminal investigation opened, but they were shut down.
* The Army brass who conspired to shut down any criminal investigation into the U.S. assassination of Pat Tillman sent "congratulatory e-mails" to each other after shutting down the snoops.
* The Pentagon heavily promoted Tillman's enlistment and service as both a recruitment tool and a domestic propaganda tool.
* The Pentagon maintained for long after his murder that Tillman died in combat, finally admitting to his family that "friendly fire" killed him _ which wasn't exactly true, either.
* Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, who commanded Tillman's base in Afghanistan at the time of his assassination, dismissed Tillman's family's attempts to find out what happened. Why? Because Pat Tillman was an atheist, like his family, so they were having "a hard time letting it go."
* In his writings _ Tillman wrote constantly in letters and diaries and e-mails _ the NFL star who became an Army Ranger after 9/11 had concluded the Afghanistan War was fake and the Iraq War was a criminal setup.
* The Pentagon still has his diary that he kept with him in Afghanistan, where he was killed, and they won't release it to his family.
* Tillman had even arranged a meeting with anti-war icon Noam Chomsky about how to go public with a veterans-against-the-war movement.
* Such a movement would've had an interesting effect on the Iraq Occupation and the then-upcoming 2004 election; Tillman had already been encouraging his fellow soldiers to vote against Bush.
* Just today, Donald Rumsfeld refused to testify on the subject of Tillman's assassination before Congress on Wednesday.
* White House Counsel Fred Fielding has, of course, already "refused to issue certain documents to the committee because of executive privilege."
* What is the White House doing with "certain documents" about Pat Tillman's murder?
* Says Pat Tillman Sr.: "The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons. This cover-up started within minutes of Pat's death, and it started at high levels. This is not something that people in the field do."

Cash said:
I think his death was a very unfortunate accident. The points offered by this post...many of them are pretty broad by nature...and others are just vague.

Show some reliable sources for them...and maybe I'll look deeper. Until then...I'm going with a very unfortunate accident.

Freakpirate said: Why? What does the government really have to gain?

JohnHaverchuck said:

Most of them are vague, I agree. I only posted the whole list to avoid being accused of picking and choosing the points.

It's the three point blank head shots, after the shots to his hands and chest that I find most curious.

I don't buy the government conspiracy angle, though there's definitely been a cover up since the incident. I'd be more inclined to subscribe to a fratricide incident due to some conflict with a member of his unit.

JohnHaverchuck said:
It's the three point blank head shots, after the shots to his hands and chest that I find most curious.

Cash said:

Is that verified forensic, ballistic evidence...that he was shot three time at point blank range in the forehead.....after being shot in the hands & chest?

d20 said:
from that source, the facts say that he was shot three times from ten yards away with an M-16 and that there was no evidence of enemy fire anywhere in the vicinity.
.

FreakPirate said:


Again... what's the gain in covering that up?

FreakPirate said:

Again... what's the gain in covering that up?

KUNGFOO said:
There is no proof in any public information currently available that Pat Tillman was murdered. But recently released facts and the history of this story does cast quite a shadow of doubt on the government. There is still information that has not been released by the government and so far, the administration is citing executive privilege.

This website Wonkette, which I'm not really familiar with, may be blowing the facts out of proportion. But that doesn't excuse the government from any possible wrong-doing.

VoteVets.org has a petition up, demanding that the Bush Administration release all documents relative to this case. The government's failure to do so coupled with it's past failure to tell the truth, especially in this matter, is troubling. I can't image anybody with the ability to reason properly having any argument against releasing these documents to the public.

FearTheReaper said:
Wonkette is a pretty reliable source.

JohnHaverchuck said:
For the record, I know Wonkette's not the best source to use. It's just that they synthesize various references into easily digestible chunks (and yes, cast it in a certain light).

Cash said:

The way that punchlist is worded....no, they aren't a reliable source. Unless you;re looking for inflammatory propaganda...as opposed to objective information.

Cash said:

The way that punchlist is worded....no, they aren't a reliable source. Unless you;re looking for inflammatory propaganda...as opposed to objective information.

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

FearTheReaper said:
Here's the AP story.

JohnHaverchuck said:
It's the three point blank head shots, after the shots to his hands and chest that I find most curious.

PointBlank said:

Are you seriously blaming me??!?

Formus said:
Personally, I couldn't care any more about Pat Tillman than any other dead soldier in either war. So he was a pro football player. So the fuck what? It means nothing. He's just another man sucked into service by 9/11 whom the Bush Administration had (and has) fucking abandoned to his death. Why do we suddenly care so much about the death of a soldier because he's a fucking pro football player? As if it wasn't somehow in perspective before? Let's start caring about and investigating the deaths of the 3600 other soldiers who've died, and I'm guessing more than one of them has been killed by friendly fire, before we get so riled up about a goddamn pro football player.

FreakPirate said:
Why? What does the government really have to gain?