Fuck you, Pat Tillmans brother

[Wee_Bairn]

I posted this in a different thread, but like it so much I think it deserves its own

Fuck you, Pat Tillman’s brother. Face it bro, you’re pissed becasuse you now realize that your brother was killed fighting in a stupid needless war. The rest of the country knew this from day one, but not the macho Tillman brothers. You guys are a little slow, Pat probably from too many hits to the head in football, I get it. I’m sure your Great Santini-like father instilled in you two a love for God and Country from day one, and probably beat you as children if you lost the wrestling tournament or tried to help a hurt animal, fine. But what exactly is your point here, and what exact crime do you want punishment for? Do you really think you’re gonna have a Nathan Jessup-esque “you’re goddamn right I did” moment with Bush or Rumsfeld or whoever the fuck? Or would you get a kick out of some 18 year-old from some hick town going to Leavenworth for six months because of an accident- a kid who probably only signed on to avoid spending the rest of his life working in a coal mine. Will that give you some satisfaction? Why don’t you wise up and realize that his death is his own fucking fault, that you two rubes were such narrow minded flag-huggers that you were duped by a smooth talking cowboy with a two digit IQ- how about them apples bro? And you want justice for being lied to? Is that a crime now? In the army it probably is for all I know. Again, I am no war supporter by a longshot, but they told you your brother died a hero- big fucking deal. Given the choice I would rather think my brother died saving a kid from being hit by a car than autoerotic asphyxiation. They used your brothers death for their own gain? Genius, they used him from day one, whether he wanted it or not, why stop just becasue he died? Face it, you were both stupid for enlisting, you volunteered to fight in a stupid war based on a false premise, and are now seemingly shocked to find small lies in the wake of the Big Lie? Boo-fucking hoo. You’ve been had, tuck your tail between your legs and go back home. You ain’t gonna bring Bush down, you may get a sergeant who was only following orders demoted at most, no point ruining another peons life because of your bad choices. It’s Chinatwon, baby, you’re over your head.

[saoirse]

Could you please become a conservative republican?

[Captain_Amazing]

I don’t know that the war in Afghanistan is stupid or meaningless, but anyway. From what I’ve gotten from the post, you’re pitting Mr. Tilman for being upset that his brother’s death by friendly fire was covered up? I think I’d be upset about something like that too, so I don’t really understand your outrage.

And why the personal attacks? You’ve accused the man (as well as his dead brother) of stupidity and intolerance and his father of child abuse, without proof of any of that. Do you really think that’s appropriate behavior?

[JohnM]

(Originally posted in the other thread as well.)

Wee Bairn, before the pile-on begins, maybe you’d like to withdraw some of your vitriol for the Tillmans. Pat died in Afghanistan, which despite the subsequent failure to prosecute the war in an intelligent way, was not in, most people’s opinion, a “stupid needless war.”

[D_Odds]

Disappointed that the idiocy of your post in the other thread didn’t draw enough attention, enough that you needed to start a brand new thread slagging the brother of a dead G.I. who was knowingly and repeatedly lied to by the Armed Forces? Granted, this new thread is a better way to announce to the Dope, “I am an idiot”, but most sane people prefer to keep that to themselves for as long as possible.

[Wee_Bairn]

@JohnM

(Originally posted in the other thread as well.)

Wee Bairn, before the pile-on begins, maybe you’d like to withdraw some of your vitriol for the Tillmans. Pat died in Afghanistan, which despite the subsequent failure to prosecute the war in an intelligent way, was not in, most people’s opinion, a “stupid needless war.”

Thank you, withdrawn, would a mod please close.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

I’m sure your Great Santini-like father instilled in you two a love for God and Country from day one, and probably beat you as children if you lost the wrestling tournament or tried to help a hurt animal,

Country maybe, but not God. Pat and Kevin Tillman were raised in a non-religious family and were both atheists.

They also were not knuckle-dragging “God and Country” rednecks politically. Pat Tillman opposed the invasion of Iraq and did not support Bush.

You should read something about the family before drawing conclusions about them.

Here is some interesting material from ESPN:

In a transcript of his interview with Brig. Gen. Gary Jones during a November 2004 investigation, Kauzlarich said he’d learned Kevin Tillman, Pat’s brother and fellow Army Ranger who was a part of the battle the night Pat Tillman died, objected to the presence of a chaplain and the saying of prayers during a repatriation ceremony in Germany before his brother’s body was returned to the United States.

Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.

In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: “When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.”

Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans’ religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, “I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know.”

Asked what might finally placate the family, Kauzlarich said, “You know what? I don’t think anything will make them happy, quite honestly. I don’t know. Maybe they want to see somebody’s head on a platter. But will that really make them happy? No, because they can’t bring their son back.”

Kauzlarich, now 40, was the Ranger regiment executive officer in Afghanistan, who played a role in writing the recommendation for Tillman’s posthumous Silver Star. And finally, with his fingerprints already all over many of the hot-button issues, including the question of who ordered the platoon to be split as it dragged a disabled Humvee through the mountains, Kauzlarich conducted the first official Army investigation into Tillman’s death.

That investigation is among the inquiries that didn’t satisfy the Tillman family.

“Well, this guy makes disparaging remarks about the fact that we’re not Christians, and the reason that we can’t put Pat to rest is because we’re not Christians,” Mary Tillman, Pat’s mother, said in an interview with ESPN.com. Mary Tillman casts the family as spiritual, though she said it does not believe in many of the fundamental aspects of organized religion.

“Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that this whole thing is shady,” she said sarcastically, “But it is because we are not Christians.”

After a pause, her voice full with emotion, she added, “Pat may not have been what you call a Christian. He was about the best person I ever knew. I mean, he was just a good guy. He didn’t lie. He was very honest. He was very generous. He was very humble. I mean, he had an ego, but it was a healthy ego. It is like, everything those [people] are, he wasn’t.”

[askeptic]

@Wee Bairn

Thank you, withdrawn, would a mod please close.

Dude, couldn’t you at least pretend to be the nutjob your OP seemed like? Then defend the position for twenty pages of increasing insanity then disappear behind a veil of tears. Quietly change your name and slip back in in a few days. Consider it a public service. We haven’t seen a good trainwreck in at least a day.

[lisacurl]

Thanks for sharing that, Diogenes.

[Giraffe]

@Wee Bairn

Thank you, withdrawn, would a mod please close.

I think not. We generally don’t close threads to protect people from the negative reactions to ill-considered OPs.

And locate the Enter key on your keyboard and starting using it. Sweet Jesus.

[El_Cid_Viscoso]

@Diogenes the Cynic

They also were not knuckle-dragging “God and Country” rednecks politically. Pat Tillman opposed the invasion of Iraq and did not support Bush.

You should read something about the family before drawing conclusions about them.

Here is some interesting material from ESPN:

Quality post, Homefresh. Thanks for that link.

[NurseCarmen]

Wee Bairn, for redemption, maybe you could start a pit thread on how much of an asshole Kauzlarich is.

[Slacker]

@Giraffe

And locate the Enter key on your keyboard and starting using it. Sweet Jesus.

That’s apparently the third or fourth draft, too (copied it from another thread, edited it at least once here). I shudder to consider what the original typing-while-all-worked-up version looked like.

[Wee_Bairn]

@askeptic

Dude, couldn’t you at least pretend to be the nutjob your OP seemed like? Then defend the position for twenty pages of increasing insanity then disappear behind a veil of tears. Quietly change your name and slip back in in a few days. Consider it a public service. We haven’t seen a good trainwreck in at least a day.

You’re right, and thank you Giraffe for not closing. The Chrisitian mistake was not relevant to my post, and the Iraq/Afghanistan part trivial at best. My basic point still stands.
Did these two really think the big ol’ US needed defending against Afghanistan? A third world country at best? Wasn’t the “war” agaisnt them pretty much over after the first month, months before the Tillman’s enlisted?
If the Taliban was storming the California coast, I could see the point. I cannot see two guys putting their lives at risk over some jingoistic nonsense. It was utterly ill-contrived and to complain about the cover-up is such a triviality.
So the family thought he died at the hands of then enemy instead of the US, what difference does it make, he’s still dead right?
How would their lives have been any different the whole time they thought he died at the hands of the enemy? Answer- none different. To spend time and money on fingering the guilty party in a “cover-up” will not bring your bro back, and will not bring any top level people down.
Point stands.

And slacker, great detective work

[John_Mace]

@Wee Bairn

You’re right, and thank you Giraffe for not closing. The Chrisitian mistake was not relevant to my post, and the Iraq/Afghanistan part trivial at best. My basic point still stands.
Did these two really think the big ol’ US needed defending against Afghanistan? A third world country at best? Wasn’t the “war” agaisnt them pretty much over after the first month, months before the Tillman’s enlisted?

No. Had we left right away, the Taliban would be back in power and it’s likely that al Qaeda would be back in business and rebuilding their old training camps. (And the fact that they seem to be doing exactly that in the tribal regions of Pakistan has no bearing on that-- it just means we should be dealing with that better, too.)

[Wee_Bairn]

@John Mace

No. Had we left right away, the Taliban would be back in power and it’s likely that al Qaeda would be back in business and rebuilding their old training camps. (And the fact that they seem to be doing exactly that in the tribal regions of Pakistan has no bearing on that-- it just means we should be dealing with that better, too.)

With the Taliban, this is not like WWII and Japan, where you bomb the country and they retreat and promise to be good- they regroup in another country. Afghanistan was just an easy place to set up shop. Bombing the shit out of Afghanistan did nothing but ruin the lives of Afghanis who had nothing to do with the violence. It did not stop anything.

It’s like tearing down a house infested with rats- the rats just go to another house.

[saoirse]

That’s what I thought you meant, and it’s ignorant. Tillman joined the Army during wartime. The fact that he was killed by friendly fire is not the scandal. It is the fact that this adminstration lied to the family, and to the American public about it. At the same hearings, it was revealed that the administrationlied about the Pvt Lynch rescue as well. In both cases, the purpose was to use them in a PR campaign for the Iraq war. The administration is now telling us things about Iraq. Do you see no profit in determining what kind of lies they’ve told about combat operations in the past?

[DudleyGarrett]

@saoirse

That’s what I thought you meant, and it’s ignorant. Tillman joined the Army during wartime. The fact that he was killed by friendly fire is not the scandal. It is the fact that this adminstration lied to the family, and to the American public about it. At the same hearings, it was revealed that the administrationlied about the Pvt Lynch rescue as well. In both cases, the purpose was to use them in a PR campaign for the Iraq war. The administration is now telling us things about Iraq. Do you see no profit in determining what kind of lies they’ve told about combat operations in the past?

Actually, there isn’t much profit in it at all. People believe what they want and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to change their minds – even with evidence clearly contradicting their beliefs.

There are still large groups of people who believe that the war in Iraq is just. Hell, I’m sure there are groups of people out there who still think Vietnam was a worthy cause.

[Wee_Bairn]

@saoirse

That’s what I thought you meant, and it’s ignorant. Tillman joined the Army during wartime. The fact that he was killed by friendly fire is not the scandal. It is the fact that this adminstration lied to the family, and to the American public about it. At the same hearings, it was revealed that the administrationlied about the Pvt Lynch rescue as well. In both cases, the purpose was to use them in a PR campaign for the Iraq war. The administration is now telling us things about Iraq. Do you see no profit in determining what kind of lies they’ve told about combat operations in the past?

My thing is at first these two were gung ho about the war, as were many Americans. When they realize they’ve been duped, they got mad, and want “answers”. You were duped by believing all the shit Bush, an idiot and liar, told you. You’ve been had. You are just now realizing what everyone else knew years ago, that this adminstration lies and will continue to lie. Now that the lies involve your brother, you are really really mad.

Now that it really hits home, you want someone (Bush) to pay. You aren’t going to bring anybody big down. The admin used your brother to foster support for a stupid war. You’ve been made an ass of- get over it. What is the specific crime here- the govt. lied about how your brother died? Is that wrong- fuckin’ A. Criminal- I’m not in the Army, so I don’t know, but I doubt it.

Again, how would their lives have been any different if they knew from day one an American killed him? Would he be any less dead?

[pravnik]

@DudleyGarrett

Actually, there isn’t much profit in it at all. People believe what they want and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to change their minds – even with evidence clearly contradicting their beliefs.

So you just give up and quit bringing it to the public’s attention when the government lies?