Saturday, August 4, 2007

The Tragic Epiphany of Pat Tillman

Pat Daniel Tillman, a rookie NFL player, was destined for great things. Inspired by a self-imposed patriotic duty, Tillman decided to forego a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlisted in the US Army less than one year after the September 11 event. The problem for Pat Tillman, was that he was initially a useful political asset who eventually decided to place himself on the liability side of the propaganda balance sheet. His actions broke the cardinal rule of threatening tremendous political damage to high level government officials and their policies before seeking the protections inherent in aggressively going public. It was indeed a very dangerous act, the act of potentially awakening the logic centers of multitudes of made-in-China-flag waving zombies back home.

Tillman was suffering withdrawals due to a loss of his illusions. Maybe we could call it "delusions;"....the naive and unquestioning child-like "patriotism" which, hopefully, a shrinking majority of Americans continue to suffer to this day. It is the reason for the current mess in the middle-east. The reality which dawned on Pat Tillman, is the same reality realized by an unfortunately small minority of Americans who care to do their true patriotic duty of questioning inquiry and research into history and current events beyond the pseudo-reality presented by the MOCKINGBIRD national press. Tillman's epiphany created enough anger within him that he could not control his passion. Tillman didn't have a problem with the situation in Afghanistan, where he was eventually shipped off to after his tour in Iraq, as he believed terrorists there had to be routed...the reason why he enlisted after 9/11. But Iraq was a different story for him.

"He told fellow Rangers fighting in Iraq that the war was so 'fucking illegal.'" Who Killed Pat Tillman?

Pat Tillman was too intelligent to allow full-blown cognitive dissonance and denial to maintain its grip on his mind. The brand of government criminality that we are witness to today, has been business as usual for hundreds of years. Nothing new, just more 'in-your-face' right now made possible by years of dumbing-down. It has, in better days, been kept more in check by healthy distrust of a thinking citizenry, unlike the current contingent of FOX NEWS addicted citizen-automatons. Tillman was a "fiercely independent thinker," and his uncontrolled passion may have been his own undoing. If Tillman had been an unknown enlistee, he might have eventually been disciplined to the point of being brought up on certain UCMJ charges, if he had not choosen his words carefully. But for Pat Tillman, ultimately providing such a legal forum for his grievances would have been unthinkable to the information manipulators.

"Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty."

Tillman is alleged to have suffered multiple .223 (5.65mm) rounds to the forehead fired at no more than ten yards. If the allegations of intentional fratricide are true, this would be quite an arrogant hit as the ammunition of choice for the local insurgency is certainly not NATO M-16 ammunition. A hit by mercenary "sheep dipped" soldiers?

"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." New Details on Tillman's Death

Will the soldiers, US military officials, and medical pathologist(s) who may have first hand knowledge of this alleged conspiracy stay quiet?

"One day after his death, someone burned his body armor. Two days later, someone burned his uniform" Who Killed Pat Tillman?

If there's more to this than the official story, they'd better begin to separate themselves from the cover-up pronto, because this kind of shit flies in the face of even the simplest minded "mom and apple pie"-----patriotism, which hopefully may become more difficult to manage much further beyond this point. Equating patriotism with no-questions-asked support of every violent government foreign policy, despite conflict with the national constitution and international law, is a faulty illusion resultant from intellectual laziness of the population. Unfortunately, even as this old playbook has been used many times before, people today seem to require that their generation personally suffer what previous generations have suffered, before becoming convinced themselves (once again) that they've been had. Maybe, if Vietnam were the nation accused of possessing WMDs this time around instead of Iraq, the majority of Americans might have hesitated, at least for a few seconds, before screaming for war at their television screens from the comfort of their arm chairs.

At Pat Tillman's eulogy, his brother Rich stated that Pat....

".....isn't with God... He wasn't religious."

Excuse me for chiming in here Rich, but your brother's intellect was way beyond adherence to any religious (or political) dogma, and for quite a few of us, such adherence has nothing to do with the very personal nature and essense of one's spirituality.

Your brother was a man of vast physical and moral courage. Those two attributes don't often come in pairs.

See also:

Tillman Memo Contradicted Medal Citation (03 August 2007)

Family Demands the Truth (25 September 2007)