Remember Pat Tillman
 

Today is the 15th anniversary of Pat Tillman's tragic death. Give some thought to this hero today and to his fellow soldiers and veterans. Steven Elliott, the Army Ranger who was involved as the shooter in that horrible friendly fire incident, has a book coming out in May that talks about his struggles and his road to recovery after the incident. All the proceeds from that book will go to organizations serving the mental health needs of active duty and veterans. https://www.amazon.com/War-Story-Mem.../dp/1496429923

Amen

Thanks for posting this

i'm headed out this Friday for the Run...

RIP

What a sad end to an awesome story.

RIP

Seem's like it was yesterday. Can't believe it's been 15 years. What a Patriot!

RIP

Never forget how the Bush administration lied about his death as a propaganda tool

22 vets committ suicide each day, every day. 365 days. Year after year since 9/11. Seems to me that should be a higher priority.

RIP, soldier. A grateful nation loves you.

I hear a voice, "You must learn to stand up for yourself 'cause I can't always be around."

It was reported that Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in PT's forehead?

Sorry he's gone but he made the wrong decision.

RIP

RIP Cpl Tillman.

Bush had nothing to do with trying to cover up how his death occurred. Terrible shame and this and other leadership bs had lasting effects. When Jim Mattis was SecDef some of his personnel recommendations were based on decisions that were made back then over leadership and cover ups.

His memorial page even still bothers me in it’s tone And phraseology:

“On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman was fatally wounded when his Ranger unit came under fire during combat operations in southeastern Afghanistan. After he was medically evacuated from the scene, he was pronounced dead by U.S. officials at approximately 11:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.”

https://www.soc.mil/Memorial%20Wall/...an_Patrick.pdf

A couple of ESPN (not A R M Y versions) of how it happened:

http://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/26573668

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/sto...enduring-guilt

If you have any interest in Tillman, don’t read the shooter’s book. Read Jon Krakauer’s.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/...ryId=112816210

This Saturday I volunteered at Amazon to handout water at the Pat Tillman 15th Annual Run here in Tempe.

https://pattillmanfoundation.org/pats-run/

R.I.P. soldier.... Gone but never forgotten!

Friendly fire a.k.a. a politically-motivated assassination to make sure he didn't speak out against our disastrous wars.

Didn't he get ahead of himself, **** things up, and get himself fragged?

Yea, let's celebrate that guy...

He sacraficed his life for his country when he could have been making millions playing a football game you dumb piece of shit..

Dumb move apparently. And I'm supposed to applaud that? Nope.

Miss a few tackles, no big. Go all Rambo and shit and get your own team to frag your ass before he got them killed? Kinda big don't you think?

And I isn't dum. But aren't you the guy everyone hates? If so, blow me bro.

Short version is he got suckered by the run-up to war, joined up with his brother, became understandably disillusioned, and then got fragged in an iffy friendly fire incident.

#ChrisKyle

Another Who ra (whatever), uneducated, dipshit. Yay America! (puke)

Tillman couldn't hold grades is what I heard (as a gall darned FB player). And it was AS****ingU. I could get a degree there in, like, 3 days.

Pat Tillman, and his "courage" is overrated.

RIP though. Dying sucks.

Pat is overrated as a hero. He left millions, left his wife and kids only get killed. It's not like he was defending the Eastern coast from invasion.

Stupid decision.

You can hate whoever and whatever you like.

I just find it extremely funny that a guy who cried over losing his cat, and cheated with the girl of one of his friends is judging other people for being a dipshit.

The Tillman thing is overblown, so is Kyle. I get why people blow them up but never understood why people want to shit on the people who are being built up. If you want to shit on people it should be the people who build them up into this folklore and not shit on the dead guys. All because you feel some kind of weird feeling to shit on guys for wanting to join and be in the military.

**** I’m one of the uneducated dipshit that joined straight out of high school. I have since got out have 2 degrees and don’t owe a dollar for it. So this dipshit was smart enough to **** the system to his advantage, and uses those degrees to keep track of my pets.

Didn't he bail on the NFL to go to war where he was shot by members of his own team

sad shit

Point taken. I am wrong and will thereby leave CP forever.

Later girls.

You are a disrespectful asshole. It's pretty obvious by your posts so it doesnt surprise me you are talking bad about an American hero.

What have you done for your country lately?

My tax bill far outweighs Pat's. By like 100%.

I've repped you and said my peace. I'm out of CP. Hit me up soon if you want to continue to correspond offline. I'm pulling myself out of the Phoenix crew as well. good guys but I gotta go.

Received a nice update today from the Pat Tillman Foundation about one of their Tillman Scholars, a physician and former Navy Flight Surgeon who's now working at the CDC, Sarah-Blythe Ballard, MD PhD

Idiot that threw away millions and abandoned his family to go get killed over some bullshit.

I am a retired vet with numerous trips to Iraq and I think he's a damn moron.

If I had to play for the Arizona Cardinals, I would also give up millions of dollars and risk my life in a war

So what the hell happened exactly? "Fragged" what does that mean? Being serious here

His fellow soldiers killed him by mistake, A "Friendly Fire" accident.

I wouldn't

Sorry to tell the truth. You don't give up millions and leave you wife a widow and kids with no father to fight in a bullshit conflict. It's not like he went to defend the eastern seaboard.

Watch out, Super Vet is going to tell you what is / is not worth fighting for, and what their personal decisions should be...cause you know, he's been there and done that shit.

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

How long was "forever"? A couple days? ROFL

The enemy took advantage of Tillman nature and ran a middle screen.

Cliff Notes version.

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/...army-disgrace/

Crap article. Blah, blah, blah...I am not saying the Army is blameless nor that Pat was a saint.

I wanted to read the facts of what happened. Maybe nobody knows.

I watched the Pat Tillman documentary earlier this week, pretty bad deal no matter how you slice it. Will likely never know the truth but I think it was accidental, I'm not saying its impossible but its hard to believe they would have murdered him, it's just too far off the scale for those type of individuals.

And damn I had forgotten how much a douche eDave was in this thread originally, ****ing wow.

Seems like a really weird time in history to randomly start bashing Pat Tillman. Dan posted a nice update that really has nothing to do with Tillman personally and people start taking shots?


Edit: I guess by “people” I mean Red Dawg.

Interesting read. I'm still fuzzy on the "fratricide" angle. Are they saying he was killed on purpose? Or accidental friendly fire?

EDIT
Never mind, I looked it up:
frat·ri·cide
/ˈfratrəˌsīd/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: fratricide

the killing of one's brother or sister.
"Cain justifies his fratricide with lethal logic"
a person who kills their brother or sister.
plural noun: fratricides
the accidental killing of one's own forces in war.
"the Vietnam War saw fratricide increase because of the close-in jungle fighting"

Did you actually read the entire thing? What behavior by Tillman would justify being shot three times in the head by a fellow American soldier? You say he wasn't a saint so I assume you are implying he deserves some blame in this? And the Army has literally no defense for how the handled this. None.

Forever unknown unless somebody comes forward and tells the full truth of what happened. The clustering of bullet wounds in his head made his death questionable if it was murder or accident.

He should have never been there.

What’s with all this negativity with Tillman these days?

Guy was there because he wanted to be there. Maybe it’s not what you or I would have done in his position, but it was his life.

Mad respect for what he did.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...0hhrg41930.htm


https://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04...ing/index.html

Three ARMY investigations around that time have always bugged me for senior ARMY officer involvement and story telling- particularly early on in the events. I had involvement then in the other two.Not in Ranger Tillman’s but I have always been bothered by it. A good place to think is from the Pat Tillman bridge:

https://www.hdrinc.com/portfolio/mik...ver-dam-bypass

In case you’re curious/bored, the other 2 involving story telling then that I think then showed an overzealousness to get in front of strategic messaging and tales by senior ARMY officers;

Jessica Lynch:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/re...-jessica-lynch

MarSoc with local KC connection:

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/new...ion-from-hqmc/
Chaos Mattis kinda got some justice here, by preventing 1 of the story tellers from becoming a Combatant Commander, years later -but hardly equitable.

I know Fred Galvin well. Spent many, many hours discussing his and Fox Company's ordeal and wrote a few letters on his behalf, to likely no effect. Yes, some senior ranking A R M Y officers massively over-reacted and incredulously sided with the Afghan's story over our own troops. I find that incredibly disheartening, but perhaps not unsurprising considering whom was involved-- as I worked on Nicholson's staff once upon a time.

However, and I may be speaking out of turn, Fred will tell you he was hung out to dry by more than a few U S M C senior ranking officers as well, and does not have much of anything positive to say about the highly lauded former SECDEF/Warrior Monk who seems to have a popular following. But of course just one man's keyhole perspective...there's always three sides.

Concur. No out of turn. from what I know of Fred’s story from him and hell, I may have read your letter unless it was personal for the CMC- I spoke to Fred years ago and mainly knew the MarSoc CGs-so little tactically and then it was well after the investigation and most of the beltway politics of it. I was involved with the original SECDEF decision to create a MarSoc and subsequent USMC decisions and deployments.

It was jammed down usmc throats but in fairness the USMC had spoken for years out both sides of our mouths, and we knew it. I don’t dispute Fred’s or perhaps your view of chaos. But that is a little inside baseball. I had battles with Jim ever since he was a Bn Co. He always out ranked me, so tough to win unless I called bigger or equal dogs or could stand squarely on history/doctrine. He never forgets. I learned to use his chief (always moved with him while he was a GO. A old Co.co.for him).

I will share that some sense of ‘Chaos justice “ about Fred is why I think as SECDEF, Chaos prevented the original Army investigator from becoming a Combatant Commander, as he felt he was destined to be.

It was never about tactical capabilities, it was about Operational Control. Fred’s case was caught up in all of this beltway fight.


His case will never be right. It started with the first investigator in my opinion (never liked that guy, when I dealt with him before so there’s my bias.). I still believe he was chosen to keep the “Secret- no MarSoc” ArSOF philosophy. All led to chicken-shits of both services and Fred’s guys hung out-in my opinion.

Fascinating stuff. Well to me anyway, thanks for sharing to both of you.

And here I thought I was the only weird oh. As I read cheaters post, I realized my own was too harsh on the Army in Fred’s case. Both services had plenty of blame for leadership failures. I was thinking more about Ranger Tillman and Lynch as part of my Army centric rant.

Well, per the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary, later Vietnam-era soldiers used to frag commanders for being too gung ho.

Also for being racist.

Indeed, it’s like being a fly on the wall at the Pentagon

This joint sure has some heavy hitters, love it