Reply #37: Don't know. Here are five possibilities [View All]

[eridani]

1. Someone higher up ordered the hit to get rid of a potentially embarassing campaigner for Kerry and the Dems in 2004, or to forestall undermining of popular support for the war.
2. It actually was a 'fog of war' incident, which higher-ups reflexively tried to cover up because Tillman was a poster boy and that would look much worse than the typical friendly fire incident. There are probably a few odd scenarios you could think up that might result in a panic shooting at 10 yards, and very unlikely things occasionally do really occur.
3. Personal rancor--someone didn't like it that he was anti-Bush, an atheist, promoted over their heads just because he was a football star, a smartypants intellectual, etc.
4. Tillman was preparing to reveal someone's wrongdoing (high-handedness with civilians, getting cozy with drug trafficking warlords, etc.) and was taken out to prevent this.
5. Tillman was the gung-ho sort who took on dangerous and pointless missions, and was killed by someone who didn't want to keep doing that. (Standard Vietnam fragging motive.)

The burning of his diary points to 1, 3 or 4, but lots of speculations are plausible in the absence of full information. At some point, investigators wondered enough about the possibility of 3 to actually ask whether anybody in his unit might have had a grudge against him. The executive privilege invocation might or might not mean something--by this time it's more of a tropism than a strategy coming from Bushies.