The Army inquiry is getting more and more disgusting:http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=061109&cat=news&st=newsd8l9jrdg0&src=ap
My question: will this thing EVER be resolved? or doe the inquiry point to incompetence at higher levels? i have a few good questions:
these ‘special ops’ missions; who approves them?
-when highly-trained soldiers (like the Rangers) screw up, who is responsible?
-obviously, the mission that Tillman was on, was conducted by soldiers who were under intense fire, and (most probably0 had their nerves frazzled by hours of combat/insufficient sleep. was this mission even worth it?
Probably not, sinse even after all the investigation, the family still says “Still, the Tillman family complained that questions remained: Who killed Tillman? Why did they fire? Were the punishments stiff enough?” Fuck! All but the last question has already been answered. And the last one is just opinion based on the evidence. The experts seem to think no harsher punishment is necessary. The family keeps seeking investigations of the investigations and the same result comes of it: No New Charges. Let it go.
"*One investigator told the Tillmans that it hadn’t been ruled out that Tillman was shot by an American sniper or deliberately murdered by his own men _ though he also gave no indication the evidence pointed that way.*What the hell benefit would this serve ANYONE? Why would a sniper be ordered to kill Pat Tillman? Shit, man. His death was rather tragic and a terrible part of war, but every little tragedy is not automatically a fucking conspiracy!
*“I will not assume his death was accidental or ‘fog of war,’” said his father, Pat Tillman Sr. “I want to know what happened, and they’ve clouded that so badly we may never know.”*Sounds like they pretty much have the just of it to me, and I’m not even privvy to the juicy details in the official report that the family got to see. Hell, the info in that one article alone seems to provide sufficient info. Why will he not accept the “fog of war” explanation? Why does he think there is some great conspiracy? He’s a grieving parent who is not acting rationally, and the government is going out of their way to placate him. Everytime a new report comes back that restates the exact findings of the previous investigation, he think the conspiracy goes even higher up.
We should just honor the man, his sacrifices and his service. Learn from the mistakes made and move on.
It’s easy to look back now and nitpick every little decision. A poor decision or even several does not equal incompetence. And saying that a commander ordered his men to execute a dangerous operation, or one that may jeopardize their safety? My answer to that is: “Fucking Duh.” Their Army soldiers. Their fucking Rangers. It’s not a safe job. Sometimes they are given more dangerous objectives because they’re Rangers, not despite it. That is why the unit is VOLUNTEER!
It’s not incompetence to order elite soldiers to move out and fight an enemy even though everything is not perfect. Sometimes soldiers will operate under less than desirable conditions (broken equipment, not enough firepower, etc) but that doesn’t mean that someone should go to prison for it or that some grand conspiracy made it all happen because someone somewhere wanted the unit to get ambushed.
Same as when any other soldier screws up.
It depends on the mission. But a Platoon Level operation is planned out by a LT through guidance from the CPT who is developing the Company’s mission… which is carrying out the intent of the Battalion… etc.
Certain Special Operations (which this was not), are approved by a committee of high ranking folks. They decide a mission needs to be done and they put it out to a select few units based on Area of Responsibility, rotation, and other factors. These units all go into isolation and make their plan.
Then each unit briefs their plan to the committee. The committe chooses which unit will carry out the mission based on which plan they like best as well as other factors.
Like I said, it depends on the mission. But any given mission will have multi-levels of ‘approval’. So people could spend years trying to pass the buck or blame more people (which apparantly happens). Lt can say “I did this because pressure from my CPT to accomplish X”. The CPT says, "Well, I was working off of guidance from the LTC who said this was absolutely necessary to the mission and the suspense for hitting phase line blue was a week away and it was vital to accomplish the mission. Then the LTC says “well… I told him it was vital, but I didn’t tell him to move during the daytime. Damn… I didn’t mean it was that vital.”
Should everyone go to prison because for this?
Not sure, I dont have that info. But like I said above, the perception of importance may have been higher at different levels. If that makes sense. Maybe some leaders thought it was that important. But now, looking back with the benefit of years of disecting the entire thing, we see that intelligence did not really show as great a threat or need for the operation as they previously thought. Hell… that can be said about the enitre WAR in Iraq, and here we’re talking about ONE mission. So importance is definitely a debatable fact. It’s not fare, though, to look back now and say “Well you should have known all this stuff and looked at all these satelite images and interviewed all these people. Because we spent the last 2 years investigating and looking at all this and we discovered that it wasn’t really necessary.”
That’s not fair. If the Army took years to analyze every minute detail before every platoon level mission. Hell, nothing would ever get done. Platoon level missions like this one are usually the thing that finds out the shit to begin with.
“We looked all over and didn’t find shit.” or “Well, we walked into village Alpha and we were attacked by 500 heavily armed insurgents. 3 people died. Too bad intelligence didn’t know they were there, maybe we should have waited a year to find out. Maybe we should blame someone for sending us in there. Someone should go to prison! Oh… wait, that’s right. It was our job to find out if anyone was there. Well… yeah, they’re over there, that’s for sure.”
Anyway, I’m just rambling now. Was Pat Tillman’s death an unfortunate result of combat? Yes. A multilevel Conspiracy? No. Deliberate? No.
Did he volunteer for the Army? Yes. Did he volunteer for an elite infantry unit? Yes.
Is an elite infantry unit dangerous? Yes. Is friendly-fire such a huge problem in the military that its prevention is stressed at every training event in the Army and still, unfortunately, not totally preventable? Yes.
And to all the complaining about the unit having to perform under less than desirable conditions and that they were asked to accomplish something without being given enough time, etc. I would like to quote the first two and most relevant parts of the Ranger Creed:
Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment.
Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move farther, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.
Telling a Ranger Platoon to split up and move faster does not, IMO, merit a prison sentence.
From the article:
And this is the key. The Pentagon sat on the friendly-fire component of his death because Tillman was a celebrity, and it served their short-term interests to play-up his sacrifice and his heroism by milking the tragedy of his death in the media–something that would’ve been impossible to due if they admitted that he died the way many soldiers do: in a way that’s easy to see as pointless and wasteful.
Now that the Pentagon has engaged in a small-scale cover-up, who can blame the parents for wanting the “truth”? I imagine it must be tough to admit that your son’s death was cynically exploited by your own government as a public relations maneuver. In their minds, I’m sure that it has to be more, his death must mean something larger and more significant. I’m sorry for their loss, but I don’t think any answer is going to truly satisfy them, and the more they dig, the more ugly realities about combat (thing’s that shouldn’t be, but are in fact, commonplace) will surface.
Someone ordered his uniform and body armor burned.
Unless that’s standard army practice, that can mean only one thing: coverup. Can we at least identify who gave the order to burn the forensic evidence, and prosecute him or her as accessory to murder? “Obstruction of justice” merely covers the physical act of removing the evidence – one would have no reason to do so unless one were guilty or an accessory, so can’t we presume that motive and charge with “accessory”?
That won’t get everyone, but it might get one of the bastards.
Sailboat
Wait, there was a murder?
You do know that friendly fire incidents happen frequently. Are you seriously contending that if an American soldier shot Pat Tillman that they should be prosecuted for murder? That’s just foolishness.
And the contention that the only explanation for getting rid of evidence is to cover up a murder is just as foolish. The got rid of the evidence to cover up the fact that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, because getting yourself killed fighting the Taliban makes good propaganda, getting senselessly killed by accident makes bad propaganda.
To believe that Pat Tillman was murdered on purpose boggles the imagination. What purpose, exactly?
In the running for a vacant high-ranking civilian leadership position? 
I can understand the family wanting to know about a govt. coverup, but I can’t see what the point is to wanting to know specifics about the actual shooting- do they want the other soldiers to get in trouble? What will that do, or prove? I am no war supporter, but those guys are under unbearable stress every moment, assuming the shooting was not malicious, I say drop it. No offense, but no matter what, he ain’t coming back. Unless they want to show the govt. is a mess, doesn’t train soliders properly, puts soliders on duty who are too tired, stressed, etc. to be there, but I think that’s the general consensus anyway.
I’d say that points to incompetence on the part of whatever officer decided to give a combat assignment to a soldier who just had eye surgery.
I’d say this is more of a bullshit excuse on his part than command negligence. The surgery is done by Army doctors and is pretty common. I am not sure what the recovery time is on something like this, but it’s not more than a couple weeks at the most. If he was seeing haziness due to his surgery, he would have been put on profile. He would never have been approved to deploy if there had been an issue.
In fact, I want to know just how recently he had surgery. His unit never would have even let him have the elective surgery immediately before deployment. They wouldnt want any soldiers recovering from treatment or on profile before deploying. He would have been told to just wear his glasses.
So when I read this, all I see is a statement he made in a hasty attempt to shift blame and responsibility from himself.
It’s a simple fix to look into this one. Pull his med records. When was his surgery? Was he cleared for combat? By whom? Had he gone to sickcall at anytime before the incident complaining of hazy vision?
It’s so easy to look into, that I’m sure it was checked out. The fact that nothing more is said about this and no detail is given (like the most important: WHEN), I dont think there is anything to this statement.
The uniform was contaminated with blood & body fluids. In this H.I.V.-aware world, I’d say that burning contaminated clothes is a must.
Well according to one of the shooters Tillman’s last known words were, “Cease fire friendlies, I’m Pat fucking Tillman,” so I think that would be a pretty good indication.
A good indication of what?
Sir Reginald Bumwipe it’d be a good indication of virtually nothing aside from the fact that when automatic weapons are being fired there is an incredible amount of noise and little chance you’ll hear what someone many yards away is yelling at you.
Personally, I will be the first to say that, in combat we have to give people quite a lot of leeway for mistakes made. When bullets are whizzing by you it is incredibly difficult to make the best decision possible, especially when the best decision possible may require significantly more information than you have the time or ability to acquire at that moment.
At the same time, as a former Army officer there is a certain standard I hold all soldiers in the Army to, and a certain different standard to which I hold officers.
Firstly, I have not read the linked news article but I have read a lengthy depiction of the incident in which Tillman was killed. My understanding is Tillman’s platoon was conducting patrols in an attempt to eliminate Taliban forces who were in the general area. The entire region had been divided into a grid, and Tillman’s platoon was working its way through the grid in attempts to eliminate or capture any hostiles they could find.
The trouble began with a broken down Humvee. The platoon’s commander was Lt. David Uthlaut who was a fresh graduate from West Point, his solution for the Humvee problem was to move it to an area where the Army could safely come pick it up. He felt he had two options, one was to send the entire team out with the Humvee and the other was to split the platoon into two, sending one half on to continue the search operations and the other half to take the Humvee to a rendezvous point.
Uthlaut’s opinion was the entire platoon should stay together, they only had one heavy machine gun amongst them and it was his opinion as a professionally trained military officer that it was the best course of action. His superior (who in the report I read was kept unnamed and secret) disagreed, and ordered one half of the platoon to continue on with their operations. This particular superior was mad because he felt the team should be further along in its mission and was behind schedule.
However, the platoon would not reach Manah (their destination) before dark, nor would they be able to conduct search operations before dark. Uthlaut communicated with his superiors via email explaining that unless the (then) standing procedure that no search operations be conducted after dark was modified it made little sense to move half his men to Manah where they would not be engaged in anything other than sitting there and waiting until the next day (by which time the serial that had gone with the Humvee would have met back up with them.)
Uthlaut’s commander would not be persuaded, and like a good soldier Uthlaut followed the orders, even though he felt they were not wise–this does not change the fact he was bound to follow them, you do not have the option to disobey an order based on the wisdom of said order (only the legality.)
I feel this decision was both senseless and unwise by the superior–again, someone whose name and rank were specifically kept secret in the reports I’ve read, to my knowledge this particular superior was communicating through Uthlaut via Uthlaut’s company commander.
This guy fucked up, he had no business giving an order like that and furthermore he had no business doing so in direct opposition to the officer in the field, the officer who knows best the operational capability of his unit and the situation at hand.
That’s the first mistake I see in the situation.
Pat Tillman and Lt. Uthlaut were amongst the group that had gone to Manah for the night. In the other group was one Sgt. Baker. In their attempts to move the Humvee to the rendezvous point, an Afghan truck driver they had hired informed them he could not tow the vehicle over the rough terrain, and suggested they circle around Manah instead. All I know about this particular point is Sgt. Baker then took the initiative to circle around Manah and no radio communication was made to his CO in Manah at the time with the other half of the platoon. I do not know the reason for this, but anything other than equipment failure makes that unacceptable.
Under the version of the report I have read, Baker’s men are attacked by mortar rounds once they enter a canyon, as some Taliban fighters positioned up there have taken the opportunity to ambush them. Baker’s men more or less shoot at everything they see.
Uthlaut, over in Manah by now hears gunfire down the road and orders his men out to investigate. He tries to establish radio contact with the other half of his platoon, but because they are by this time inside the canyon their radio transmissions are blocked. As they approach, they are fired on by Baker’s men and take cover. Eventually after a lot of yelling from Uthlaut’s men that they are friendlies firing stops and Pat Tillman assumes the situation is over and Baker’s men realize who they are. However, despite the fact that when Tillman and several other soldiers from Uthlaut’s serial began waving their arms and etc., Baker’s men opened fire yet again at this point killing Tillman.
Baker’s men acted incompetently. Baker himself was a relatively young sergeant and two men under his command had never been in combat before. They had been fired upon by mortar rounds and were in one of the scariest positions you can ever imagine, they had been ambushed by enemies who held higher ground.
The correct thing to do here is to get your ass out of that canyon as soon as possible, but Sgt. Baker probably was not trained or educated to the degree necessary to realize this, at least nut under such conditions. There’s a reason officers lead men into battle, and there’s a reason they are trained so extensively to do so.
While I see multiple failings with Baker’s actions and the men under his command, I’m willing to give them a huge amount of leeway; they had been fired on, ambushed, and were in an incredibly chaotic situation. Still, firing on people who are waving their arms at you and not firing is not what you are trained to do, and that, while unacceptable, I’m still willing to excuse because their adrenaline was probably still pumping and they were all under the assumption they were fighting for their lives.
The reason Pat Tillman died is because a superior officer, operating hundreds of miles away ordered Uthlaut to divide his platoon in half against Uthlaut’s wishes. It’s just that simple. Sgt. Baker wasn’t properly trained to lead half a platoon (there’s many NCOs who can and do easily lead men under circumstances such as these–Sgt. Baker was not one of those), leading the platoon was Uthlaut’s job but unfortunately half of his men were not under his command at the time–a situation he had not wanted and had opposed vehemently.
Ultimately I see fuckups and then I see incompetence from Uthlaut’s superior. But I don’t see what I consider to be a crime, certainly not a crime from anyone on the field. You can’t charge men who are fighting for their lives with murder or negligent homicide if they accidentally shoot a comrade. It was an accident, made under incredible circumstances.
Uthlaut’s superior, in my opinion, without knowing even this man’s name, was incompetent and should be dismissed. I would not be surprised if his incompetence and impatience has killed other soldiers, but I do not feel his incompetence was of the criminal level. And while I don’t feel you can charge soldiers on the field with mistakes made in a split second, I also don’t feel you can charge officers with general incompetence. Messing up is going to happen, and most of the greatest military leaders in American history have made disastrous mistakes that cost lives, that’s part of it.
So–that’s standard practice?
I want you all to recall a certain video of American gunners carefully targeting and wiping out what appeared to be wounded and unarmed people/insurgents. Recall also all the coy defenders of this sort of level of engagement.
Now think about this situation. Wounded, being fired upon, calling for relief and mercy, and the troops just keep firing until the targets are swiss cheese. Not so funny now, is it?
I had PRK surgery this summer. I returned to full function (driving a car, etc) in three days. In the first week or two after the surgery, my vision would indeed go hazy once a day or so, but a bit of blinking always cured it. By no means does the surgery create a 24/7 condition of hazy vision.
Cite, thanks.
People getting violently killed is never funny, regardless of the circumstances.
I think that heavily prosecuting cover-ups is a good thing in general. People who lie to us to manipulate us need to be exposed and taken down. If they actually regard friendly fire as worth a cover-up siilar to that one would use to hide a murder, I’m not sure it’s wrong to over-prosecute them similarly.
Sailboat
Most of the time I do not think cover ups violate any particular statute or criminal code. Just because the public feels like they are entitled to the truth does not mean that the people in the know are legally obligated to give them the truth. The military has had many good reasons to lie over the years, and to take away their ability to do so wouldn’t be prudent.
The military has good reason to lie to the people.? Do they really. Of course ,they would make that decision. We are just poor non militaries ,who can’t comprehend the problems of combat. Same logic police use. This logic makes coverups easy.There should always be some civilian oversight.We are entitled to the truth they want us to have .I don’t think so.