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Edited Date/Time
1/14/2012 10:42am
Tomorrow, September 15th, a new book chronicling the life and unfortunate death (as well as the cover up) of Pat Tillman will hit book shelves. The writer, Jon Krakauer, has been working on this for a long while now.
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780385522267.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780385522267.html
He predicted that himself in notes and letters he wrote
The book should be good.
Krakauer includes passages from Tillman's diary that show a keen awareness of the propaganda that would follow his death. While on his first mission as an Army Ranger, Tillman was sent to rescue Pvt. Jessica Lynch, a soldier who had been captured by militants in Iraq. Lynch was falsely characterized by the Pentagon as a military hero who had gone down with guns blazing. She later testified that she had not fired a single bullet.
"This mission will be a P.O.W. rescue, a woman named Jessica Lynch," Tillman wrote. "As awful as I feel for the fear she must face, and admire the courage I'm sure she's showing, I do believe this to be a big Public Relations stunt. Do not mistake me, I wish everyone in trouble to be rescued, but sending this many folks for a single low ranking soldier screams of media blitz."
A year later, Tillman was the center of another public relations stunt when the Bush administration said he died fighting the Taliban, rewrote eyewitness testimony, awarded him a Silver Star, and broke its own law by announcing hisdeath within 24 hours of his family learning of it.
Tillman seemed to predict that the government would turn him into a false hero. Spc. Jade Lane, a friend of Tillman's, told Krakauer that during their first night as Army Rangers in Iraq, Tillman had told him he was worried that if anything happened to him, the government would create a media blitz around him.
"One night he said that he was afraid that if something happened to him, they would parade him through the streets," Lane said. "And those were his exact words: 'I don't want them to parade me through the streets.' It just burned into my brain, him saying that."
The Shop
Makes me nuts that our soldiers are put through this shit . If you go to war you go to annihilate the other side.
If you go to war you go to annihilate the other side.
yes sir..thats why we are here
Pit Row
I agree that Tillman is an inspiration, and that he did what he thought was right, not what was the easy thing, and that's to be admired.
But a hero is someone who saves someone else's life/limb at a potential cost of their own. Pulling a child out of a burning building is heroism. Getting shot down over Vietnam and getting stuck in prison (like John McCain) is not heroism. It's just bad luck.
The more you use the word, the less it means anything.
That may be true, but all of us have been guilty of that in our lives.
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