House Dems want Rumsfeld, generals to testify in Tillman case

[sabra]

Source: SF Chronicle

Washington -- House Democrats, suspecting that top Pentagon officials covered up the friendly fire death of football star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman, are calling former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five generals to testify about the San Jose's native 2004 fatal shooting by solders in his unit in Afghanistan.

The Democrats' most tenacious investigator, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, announced Monday that he has invited Rumsfeld, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and retired Gen. John Abizaid, who oversaw operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to testify at an Aug. 1 hearing.

Waxman's goal is clear from the title of the hearing -- "The Tillman Fratricide: What the Leadership of the Defense Department Knew."

Rumsfeld and the others may resist testifying before the committee --

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/16/BAG8PR1AII19.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

[earthboundmisfit]

1. Can/will they try to use Executive Privilege on this, too???

I don't imagine it would cover a former SecDef, but I'll betcha they'll give it a shot...

[underpants]

2. They were only concerned about perception and appearance

The committee also wants testimony from Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who sent a high-priority cable five days after Tillman's death to Abizaid and other top Army commanders, warning that the former NFL safety probably had been killed by friendly fire -- not by Taliban insurgents as the Army claimed publicly.

The memo, viewed as a "smoking gun" by congressional investigators, urged Abizaid to immediately contact "POTUS" -- the president of the United States -- "to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment."

That being said I have no caution in stating that from what I have read on this and from watching the behaviour of these Bush/neo-con animals over the last few years it seems clear that they either had Tillman killed or planned to put him in as many dangerous situations as possible to add to the chance that we would never hear what he had to say about Bush and the war on Iraq.