The Obfuscation Report

Jon Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org and veteran of the Iraq war.
The worst way you can further exacerbate the pain survivors of a fallen soldier feel, is to keep them wondering why and how their loved one died. Now past three years since former NFL star Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan, his mother, Mary Tillman, and her family do not have answers. Unfortunately, documents meant to put the investigation into his death to rest are only bringing up more painful questions, rather than calming them. What’s worse is that the case could start to have serious repercussions with internal confidence in the Armed Forces.

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that among the files on the case that the news agency obtained were details of Army medical examiners being unable to convince the military to look into whether Tillman was intentionally killed. According to the documents, the wounds they found were inconsistent with the government’s original official story that Tillman was cut down by Afghani fighters and looked more like he was killed by an American M-16 just a mere 10 yards away.

After an investigation, the government changed the story — that Tillman was a victim of friendly fire, an honest mistake, because he was mistaken for the enemy. The recent revelations now cast this conclusion into serious doubt. You don’t mistake someone from 10 yards away. But, was it murder or negligence? Was this a deliberate homicide?

President Bush is not helping at all. With these new details, and his decision to invoke executive privilege in the Tillman investigation, the President is certainly sending the signal that he has something to hide.

It is inevitable, then, that unless the President comes clean, rumors about Tillman’s death will take hold. By stonewalling, there is no way to stop people from wondering, “Was the man the White House used to promote the war ordered to be killed because he was becoming increasingly critical of the war in Iraq?” It was well known that Tillman was critical of the decision to go to war, and had often read and quoted Noam Chomsky. I don’t personally believe such a conspiracy to be the case, but until the President comes clean, rumors like that will continue to grow. Every officer knows that if a soldier in their command is killed they must write the family and tell them the truth, for exactly that reason. Why can’t the man who sent Pat Tillman to war, and used his death for political gain, have the courage to tell a family what happened to their son?

Ultimately, besides causing unfair pain to the Tillman family, the President is perilously close to doing severe damage to the military with his bullheadedness. If America looks at the Tillman case and concludes that the military cannot be trusted to tell the truth and take care of its own, and that the White House is an enabler of that behavior, public confidence in our fine military will wane.

Recruiters rely on the family members like mothers and fathers to allow their 18-year olds to sign up. The longer this festers and the longer questions linger, these families and our young people will lose their will to serve our country. Who gives their child to country who doesn’t honor their sacrifice? We don’t need new hurdles to recruiting like that, at a time when we desperately need to increase the size of our active duty component. Additionally, those already in the military will lose faith that the leadership actually gives a damn about them, as the Tillman case becomes a hot topic in chow halls. Morale and confidence in the institution will crumble.

In the Army, we have a saying: Good units have problems, but great units fix them. In other words, we’re largely judged in the military by how we are able to step up, accept responsibility, and correct problems, because problems that are allowed to fester are unacceptable. Unfortunately, the Tillman case just extends the pattern from this President of being unwilling or unable to step up and fix problems.

In that sense, this President, everyday, firms up his legacy as the worst Commander-in-Chief this nation has ever seen.

Labels: cover-up, George W. Bush, Pat Tillman

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

A U.S. House committee has scheduled hearings on the military's misleading statements that followed the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch in Iraq, congressional officials said Tuesday.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold the hearing April 24 as part of an investigation into whether misinformation was part of a strategy to mislead the public, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement was scheduled for later Tuesday.

The hearings come two weeks after the Pentagon released the findings of its own investigations into Tillman's death, and three years after he was killed.

The committee has been quietly investigating the Tillman case since that release and decided to add the Lynch case to the scope of its probe.

The Tillman family and some lawmakers said the previous probes were inadequate and did not sufficiently address the role of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in hiding the true circumstances of the former NFL player's death from his relatives for five weeks.

The Army maintained publicly during that time that he had been killed by enemy fire, when in fact his fellow Rangers shot him after a chaotic ambush and dozens of officers knew it.

Tillman's death received worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Lynch, a 21-year-old former Army supply clerk, became one of the most visible faces of the war when she was rescued from an Iraqi hospital after being captured by Iraqi forces on April 1, 2003. Her convoy had been attacked after taking a wrong turn in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah. Eleven American soldiers were killed and six, including Lynch, were captured.

Her videotaped rescue by special forces branded Lynch a hero at a time the U.S. war effort seemed bogged down.

It also stirred complaints of U.S. government media manipulation. Early reports, later disproved, had her suffering knife and bullet wounds while fighting off attackers until running out of ammunition.

The oversight committee's focus is on how the misinformation in both cases got its start, and why. It is investigating the sources and motivations behind the misinformation, and whether Bush administration officials should be held accountable, one official said.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/10/national/a095459D88.DTL

Labels: Donald Rumsfeld, Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, propaganda