Pat Tillman: Another Example of the Military "Using" Our Soldiers

Yes, friendly fire happens. It does. In the heat of battle, certainly, it must be extremely difficult sometimes to tell who is who and whether the shots you're hearing are coming from the "enemy's" gun or from your buddy's.

But the case of Pat Tillman, the man who left a good sports career to fight for his country, exemplifies how the military - not the grunts but the guys way up the food chain - will do just about anything not to take "heat" for one of these situations. When caught, they'll lie and otherwise obfuscate.

Today, we learned that the military ordered Tillman's gear destroyed in the hours just after his death. Why? Well, because it would apparently be more obvious how he died.

Why did they go to this trouble? They say they didn't want to hurt the family, wanting instead for them to be able to grieve.

I'm pretty sure the family grieved regardless of exactly how Tillman died. But the top guns knew Tillman's death would be notable - as opposed to the way the military treats most of the soldier deaths and ALL of the civilian ones - and they probably really liked the PR of a so-called sports hero giving it all up for his country. To admit it was friendly fire ended the full glory of the sacrifice, at least apparently to Mr. Rumsfeld and Company. To me, and probably to many of you, Tillman's sacrifice is no less because he was killed by friendly fire.

So I tend to think the illusion and the lie became much more important to the military. They used him to get him into the military - we've destroyed Afghanistan but where's bin Laden? and the Taliban is back in full operation including the stoning to death of a woman last week by the morality police - and then they used his death for good PR.

Yes, truth is often referred to as the first casualty of war. But this crew - Rummy and Myers and company - take the cake. They wouldn't know truth if they were fired upon by it. The truth is just one more thing to manipulate, like a Pat Tillman, or some 18-year-old from Kansas no one has ever heard of until his obit runs in the local paper.