Cardinal was a patriot (Tillman)

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.boston.com/sports/articles/2004/04/24/in_time_of_need_cardinal_was_a_patriot/

In time of need, Cardinal was a patriot

By Bob Ryan
Globe Columnist

April 24, 2004

Wars fought many time zones away are abstracts.

They don't become personal until there is a death in your family, or on your block, or in your office. Yesterday, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan got very personal for the Arizona Cardinals and the National Football League. That's because yesterday the Pentagon announced that Army Ranger Pat Tillman had been killed by small arms fire and mortars in what was termed a "coordinated ambush" in Eastern Afghanistan.

Pat Tillman, 27, was a most unusual and admirable young man who made news a little less than two years ago by announcing he was spurning a $3.6 million contract offer from the Cardinals to join the Army in the hopes of becoming a Ranger. He was joined in this quest by his brother Kevin, a former minor league baseball player.

The news did, and didn't, surprise people who knew Pat Tillman. It did because it was an unprecedented act in the modern sports world. You'd have to go back to World War II -- when the likes of Bob Feller were enlisting on Dec. 8, 1941 -- to find any remotely comparable action on the part of a professional sports figure.

(snip)

There was no general call to arms following 9/11, and there was no stampede to the recruiting office on the part of robust young professional athletes. There was no long line of youthful patriots willing to forego millions of dollars to act on a deep personal principle. There was just one such person, and his name was Pat Tillman. And those who knew him weren't surprised, not one bit.

Pat Tillman was sui generis. He was a 5-foot-11-inch, 200-pound bundle of muscle and energy who also happened to be a summa cum laude graduate of Arizona State University. As an undergrad, he would occasionally meditate atop a 200-foot light tower hovering over Sun Devil Stadium. He was a challenge guy who impulsively ran a marathon and who trained for the 2001 NFL season by completing a triathlon.

(snip)

When Pat Tillman announced his decision to quit football and become a soldier, he gave no press conference. He never once granted an interview during his training. When he returned to Phoenix last December after completing a tour of duty in Iraq, he paid a visit to the locker room to renew acquaintances, but he left by a side door before reporters were admitted.

...more...

[legin]

1. And the question still remains

Were the German people who fought so hard and valiantly for the war aims of Hitler, heros or idiots ?

[QC]

11. Oh please.

Too bad Godwin's Law doesn't apply on this board.

[legin]

12. And I say

that the reason it is so easy for bush* to pack the u.s. off on a war of conquest is because there is a huge streak of militarism that runs through society in the u.s., as evidenced on this board.

[legin]

13. What is heroic

about volunteering to do something that a lot of people on this planet have been desperatly fighting against for two and half years.

[QC]

14. That's a very different point

than comparing this young man to a member of the Sturmabteilung, as you did in your earlier post.

Sorry, but glib, casual Nazi analogies carry little weight with thinking people.

[RafterMan]

16. Godwin's Law?

They'd have to shut it down.

[Spazito]

2. A very admirable young man...

I suspect he would be unhappy at the media singling him out from all the others that have sacrificed and died in Afghanistan and Iraq. From the article he did his best to discourage that kind of idolatry while he was alive, very sad.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. He showed far greater character than the passle of

chickenhawk/chickenshits who are now all clamoring to score photo ops with his teammates and loved ones.

Tillman put his money where his mouth was.

A :toast: to his memory.

[freetobegay]

4. I have th utmost respect for Mr. Tillman

And I have nothng but contempt for the people who...

[Junkdrawer]

5. Who does Tillman's life more resemble? Bush or Kerry???

If that message went out, I guarantee CNN would stop speaking of Tillman in a nanosecond.

[glarius]

6. He was a young man of character and decency....

Too bad so many now seem to be using his sacrifice in a way I don't think he would approve of....And what a terrible thing, another young person who has died in this war.

[SoCalDem]

7. Another thing to consider is the fact that he went with his brother

He may have felt that by the two of them going togetherm they could see to it that they "had each others' back"...

I feel very badly for his family, and he did an brave thing, but I hate to hear the word "hero" tossed around.. He was a soldier, who went willingly into battle, and he stopped a bullet.. That in itself does not make him a hero..

A hero is someone who does something extraordinary and unexpected...like a bystander who runs into traffic to save a child, or a neighbor who goes into a burning house to rescue a stranger.. THOSE are heroic actions.. Firemen, police, and soldiers willingly do dangerous jobs.. Their jobs demand that they put their lives on the line..

A bookkeeper who risks his/her life to save someone they do not know, is heroic..

Soldiers can be heroic, but just being a soldier does not necessarily make them heroic..

[frylock]

8. i agree with you on the definition of a hero..

not to diminish the death of Pat Tillman, or the many others who have died in this BS campaign against terror, but you're right that there is nothing inherently heroic about losing your life in such a fashion. The same goes for the crew of the Space Shuttle. People who just were doing their jobs.

[maxanne]

9. what a waste of a life

and what shameful emotional manipulation is being perpetuated through his death. It's right up there with the GW 9/11 ads. Disgusting.

[tabasco]

10. A young man of great character. An awful loss.

I served with a lot of guys like him. Inspired by a true desire to serve their country.
Afghanistan should have been our only war. All the resources dedicated in Iraq should be in Afghanistan. Maybe then, this young patriot would still be alive. At least he died in the righteous, although forgotten, war.

[RBHam]

15. Pat Tillman died for a lie, that's the tragedy...

His emotional response to join the Army was because of his belief in the official story of 9-11.

Know this, there is still no evidence that would stand up in a court of law that proves the Government's version of the terrorist conspiracy. In fact, the more you dig into Ashcroft's "trial by press conference", the more holes appear.

I wonder, if Mr. Tillman had known the truth about 9-11, if he would have volunteered to invade Saudi Arabia...or Langley, Virginia.

FBI Admits: No Evidence Links 'Hijackers' to 9-11

The possibility that 19 Muslim men accused of being the Sept. 11 hijackers were not, in fact, the hijackers, is not so extraordinary an idea as it might seem.

By Michael Collins Piper
http://www.americanfreepress.net/051302/FBI_Admits__No_Evidence_/fbi_admits__no_evidence_.html

9/11 - WHAT DID THE GOVERNMENT KNOW AND WHEN DID IT KNOW IT?
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/govknow.html
excerpt:
The 19 names of suspected hijackers released by the FBI don't point to Afghanistan. They come from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates; all across the middle east without a focus in any one region. Indeed, even as the FBI was admitting that its list of 19 names was based solely on identifications thought to have been forged, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saudi Al-Faisal insisted that an investigation in Saudi Arabia showed that the 5 Saudi men were not aboard the four jet liners that crashed in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on September 11. "It was proved that five of the names included in the FBI list had nothing to do with what happened," Al-Faisal told the Arabic Press in Washington after meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House. A sixth identified hijacker is also reported to still be alive in Tunisia, while a 7th named man died two years ago!

The 19 names of suspected hijackers released by the FBI don't even appear on the passenger lists of the hijacked planes.

CNN reported that the men who hijacked those aircraft were using phony IDs, using the names of Arabs. A total of 7 of the men named by the FBI as suspected 9-11 hijackers are still alive! And the FBI Admits it has no actual evidence linking the 19 Arab suspects to 9-11

In another development, the BBC reported that the transcript of a phone call made by Flight Attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney to Boston air traffic controls shows that the flight attendant gave the seat numbers occupied by the hijackers, seat numbers which were NOT the seats of the men the FBI claimed were responsible for the hijacking!

FBI Chief Robert Mueller admitted on September 20 and on September 27 that the FBI has no way to prove the true identities of the hijackers. Yet in the haste to move forward on the already planned war in Afghanistan, our government and the FBI (which does not have the best record for honesty in investigations to begin with, having been caught rigging lab tests, manufacturing testimony in the Vincent Foster affair, and illegally withholding/destroying evidence in the Oklahoma Bombing case) are not taking too close a look at evidence that points away from the designated suspect, the people living over the oil fields.

Yet another problem lies with the described actions of the hijackers themselves. We are being told on the one hand that these men were such fanatical devotees of their faith that they willingly crashed the jets they were flying into buildings. Yet on the other hand, we are being told that these same men spent the night before their planned visit to Allah drinking in strip bars, committing not just one, but two mortal sins which would keep them out of Paradise no matter what else they did. Truly devout Muslims would spend the day before a suicide attack fasting and praying. Not only does the drinking in strip bars not fit the profile of a fanatically religious Muslim willing to die for his cause, but the witness reports of the men in the bars are of men going out of their way to be noticed and remembered, while waving around phony identifications.

more...



Smoking Gun
The 9/11 Evidence that May Hang George W. Bush

This article by Cheryl Seal mostly accepts the official story as a premise, that on September 11th four Boeing jets were hijacked by Arab terrorists and that these four planes crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, but she argues plausibly that, if so, high officials in the Bush administration must have known in advance what the Arabs were planning, but, knowing what was likely to happen, stood aside, allowed it to happen, and then took advantage of it in order to further their aims. She shows that *if* we accept the official story then George W. Bush, as commander-in-chief responsible for decisions made in the event of America being under attack, is also responsible for allowing the September 11th attacks to occur. Thus either the official story is false or George W. Bush is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans.

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/seal01.htm

[WilliamPitt]

17. Kick