Tall tales and Pat Tillman: The Cause needed a hero

Model perfect, pro athlete Pat Tillman was the poster boy for military recruitment. He gave up a lucrative NFL career to enlist in the Army and avenge the Sept. 11 Massacre.

In a 2002 Wall Street Journal column, Reaganite Peggy Noonan compared the Army Ranger to "Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable and Tyrone Power in World War II."

"It is good to see their style return," she gushed. "Markets rise and fall, politicians come and go, but that we still make Tillmans is headline news."

Making Tillmans is still Page One news. But Noonan probably meant creation the old-fashioned way, through procreation and passing along family values.

Yet, the Pentagon makes Tillmans, too. Actually, it reinvents them.

When Cpl. Tillman was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, the Army resurrected him as a mythical hero. Tall tales were told of how Tillman went out in a blaze of glory against Taliban fighters April 22, 2004.

For weeks after his death and funeral, his family was fed the lie. They had yet to be told that after members of his platoon mistakenly killed him, his uniform and body armor were burned.

Friendly fire happens. There would have been no reason to conceal this one. Except, the truth about this celebrity death would have hurt The Cause. The Cause needed Brand Tillman.

It needed a famous face to recruit more young men and women for the unnecessary war in Iraq. It needed troops abroad and support at home. With "support the troops" as the hypnotic, the propagandists and profiteers devoted to The Cause had to keep the war machinery operational. Hence, the morally repugnant Tillman Tale.

If any truth has been learned, it has been because the Tillmans pursued it. They accepted the medal, but not the cover story. They believed in "trust, but verify." Now they just verify.

Last month, when an investigation by the Pentagon's acting inspector general concluded that four senior Army officers committed "critical errors" in judgment in handling the incident, the Tillmans were incensed by the semantics. When a separate Army probe found no criminal wrongdoing, they weren't surprised.

Finally, when told "there were a series of mistakes made" but no evidence of a cover-up, they were insulted. Rightly so.

While the Pentagon publicly embellished Tillman's death, privately it treated him like collateral damage. In his case, blood isn't on Taliban hands; it is on the hands of Donald Rumsfeld and other scoundrels devoted to The Cause who use patriotism as their last refuge.

On March 26, the Tillmans issued a statement in response to the Pentagon's findings. They spoke of "malfeasance," "evidence tampering" and "conspiracy." They referenced e-mails that refer to a "Silver Star Game Plan." They cited missing reports.

They lambasted the Bush administration for "deception, evasion, and spin in the conduct of the entire dual-occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan." The Silver Star "appears more than anything to be part of a cynical design to conceal the real events from the family — but most especially, from the public — while exploiting the death of our beloved Pat as a recruitment poster."

The Tillmans don't know the whole truth, but they know why they were lied to.

"The entire military, we believe, compelled by the Secretary of Defense's office, was seeking to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, as it was embroiled in a huge tactical setback in Iraq in April 2004, and as the Pentagon was preparing to deal with the public-affairs crisis engendered by the about-to-be-revealed horror stories from Abu Ghraib."

Tillman's parents and widow deserve the congressional inquiry they seek along with subpoenas to alleged conspirators.

"The deception surrounding this case was an insult to the family; but more importantly, its primary purpose was to deceive a whole nation," they said.

Ain't that the truth.

Rhonda Chriss Lokeman is a columnist for the Kansas City Star. E-mail her at lokeman@kcstar.com