Last Ranger to see Pat Tillman alive says told to conceal info

giddyup · Apr 26, 2007

Major said:

Lobo said:

If this was any other soldier, he wouldn't have been paraded around as a recruiting tool by the Bush Admin either.
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Can you imagine any Administration that wouldn't have paraded Tillman around? He made a huge, heroic sacrifice just be joining the Rangers. Sadlly, it ended up being the ultimate sacrifice
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FranchiseBlade · Apr 26, 2007

giddyup said:

Major said:

Can you imagine any Administration that wouldn't have paraded Tillman around? He made a huge, heroic sacrifice just be joining the Rangers. Sadlly, it ended up being the ultimate sacrifice
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Yes, I can imagine an administration that wouldn't cover up his real cause of death. In fact I can only imagine very few that would do that.
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mc mark · Jul 14, 2007

Bush sites executive privilege in refusing to release internal documents to Tillman’s family regarding his death.

Panel Demands Records on Tillman's Death

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070713/tillman-friendly-fire/

rimrocker · Jul 14, 2007

mc mark said:

Bush sites executive privilege in refusing to release internal documents to Tillman’s family regarding his death.

Panel Demands Records on Tillman's Death

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070713/tillman-friendly-fire/
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Greenwald:

Still more White House secrecy -- this time in the Tillman investigation
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html

The fraud perpetrated in the Pat Tillman case -- just like the similar fraud perpetrated in the Jessica Lynch case -- was not unusual. But its high-profile victim ensured that a critically important lesson was illustrated: namely, just how deceitful the propaganda is when the military issues politically self-serving claims which a complicit media then dutifully and uncritically recites ("Pat Tillman heroically killed by enemy fire" -- "Jessica Lynch battles the Enemy to the end and is rescued from her Iraqi torture chamber" -- "the U.S. military is vanquishing al Qaeda and making Iraq safe for freedom").

Although the circumstances surrounding Pat Tillman's death are more or less known, the questions of how the fraud happened, and more importantly, who is responsible, are still unanswered. Those are among the questions which The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is currently investigating -- or at least trying to investigate. Amazingly -- truly -- the Bush administration is refusing to provide the key documents which would answer those questions, on the ground that they are protected by some sort of vague strain of "executive confidentiality":

The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting "implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests."

As dubious as the assertion of this privilege is in the U.S. attorneys case, the very idea that "executive privilege" or some vague notion of "executive confidentiality interests" can justify the concealment of these documents is just absurd on its face.

After the April hearing where the Tillman family testified, the Committee demanded "'all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President' relating to Corporal Tillman's death." This involves the death of a single soldier in Afghanistan three years ago, and specifically entails how and why the Pentagon lied about the circumstances surrounding his death. The notion that the White House and Pentagon can simply block investigations into such transparent wrongdoing on the generic ground that their behavior is "confidential" is one of the flimsiest and most offensive attempts yet to destroy any remnants of open government.

Encouragingly, this refusal to produce information was objected to jointly by Chairman Henry Waxman and the ranking Committee Republican Tom Davis. Yesterday, they sent a letter (.pdf) to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, pointing out that "the main focus of the Committee's investigation is to examine what the White House and leadership of the Department of Defense knew about Corporal Tillman's death and when they knew it."

In response to the Committee's earlier demand for information, the White House produced only two (meaningless and already-publicly-available) documents showing communications between it and the DoD about Tillman's death when, it goes without saying, there are far more communications than that. In fact, as the Waxman/Davis letter notes, they are already in possession of documents which reference White House/DoD communications on the Tillman fraud which the White House continues to conceal.

Most incriminatingly, the Committee previously obtained copies of warnings from an Army General that the official version of the Tillman death was suspect and that it was "highly possible" that, instead, he was killed by friendly fire. The warning specifically referenced the need to warn the President of this fact in light of the speeches he was planning to deliver which would include tributes to Tillman's heroism and would tout the false version of events.

The White House failed to produce any of those warnings it received, or any other documents reflecting when they learned that the version they were disseminating about Tillman was likely false. As the Waxman/Davis letter put it:

The [April] Committee hearing . . . raised questions about whether the administration has been providing accurate information to Congress and the American people about the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan. These questions have implications for the credibility of the information coming from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan and raise significant policy issues about how to prevent the future dissemination of untrue information. They also have a profound personal impact on the Tillman family.

But this latest decree from the White House that it is not subject to oversight or investigation simply underscores that we no longer have an open government in this country. They operate in complete secrecy and simply defy anyone to do anything about it.

The only issue now for Congress is how they are going to force the confrontation we desperately need, and do it as aggressively and as quickly as possible. It is past the time for lawyer letters and pretty protest statements about government secrecy. Contempt orders and referrals for criminal prosecution are long overdue. John Dean's latest FindLaw column has an excellent discussion of some of the legal and political issues governing this confrontation, and Marty Lederman previously provided a definitive survey of the mechanics of how Congress pursues a finding of criminal contempt against administration officials.

As the New York Times Editorial Page put it today in urging that Congress hold Sara Taylor and Harriet Miers in contempt: "Any lesser response would be an invitation to this executive branch, and every future one, to treat Congress not as a co-equal branch of government, but as a little more than an advisory body." That (at most) is what Congress has been for the last six years.

As their behavior in the Tillman case amply demonstrates, the White House's refusal to allow any light to be shined on what they do extends far beyond just the U.S. attorneys case. It is how they operate generally; it is but a prong in their overarching belief that they exist far beyond any checks and above the rule of law. The only two choices realistically available is to (1) allow this rampant lawlessness and tyrannical unchecked secrecy simply to continue or (2) take every step available to force it to stop. There is no third, nicer, less confrontational or more pleasant option.
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Really, what more does it take to convince members of the Bush/Cheney Cult of Personality that these guys are bad news. They have lied about the death of a US soldier in order to create favorable propaganda for their political interests, they are corrupting the basic workings of our government to keep their actions secret, and they obviously don't care about the damage they do to individuals, much less the country.

I'm astounded Bush is still in the 20's. He should be in single digits.

Someone please step up and defend this. Someone please tell me why the WH would get involved in the death of a soldier in a way that would lead them to lie and coverup.

This is indefensible.

cur.ve · Jul 14, 2007

Holy crap.
[RANT]

This is .. I mean, I'm speechless at this news. Are we in some sort of twisted Animal Farm world? Have we been mollified by our steady diet of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, of bread and circuses, that we lose our reason?

One of our biggest weaknesses as a free and open society is also our biggest strength: debate.

Why?

We give free rein, time and priority to a an immoral, twisted side of an issue as we do to a blatantly obvious correct understanding of the same issue. With technology and information overload, good news have a tendency to get lost among the bad news -- and ethical breaches like this gets lost among the noise of debates and more debates and discussion.

Witness this forum. Shrills like TJ -- no matter how silly their ideas -- if they keep on putting out their opinions, it will minimize more thought out and reasonable ideas.

This administration has so blatantly crossed any sort of moral line so long ago: a war to cater to selfish interests, hidden agendas among all the major government agencies, from the FDA to the energy task force to the EPA -- that stuff the linings of insiders, the steady degradation of civil liberties, the lies and manipulations and PR sleight of hands that.. if not confuses the public, immobilizes our understanding of them by the sheer volume of spin -- the moral hypocrisy, from wedge issues to the leaks to the cavalier usage of authority, the nepotism in the Supreme Court nominations, the abuse of power in the Justice Department, and now -- executive privilege.

At some point -- reasonable people would think -- "You know -- I have a bad feeling about this: so many 'near' displays of wrongdoings, I can't prove it, but there's some sort of stink here, with so many near-misses.. something is wrong, right? I mean, technically, no one has been proven wrong in this administration, but there's this cloud over them.. and doesn't it seem like they're just waiting out the days until this nightmare end, until they can get away with it and everyone breathes a sigh of relief when the country can move on?"

But the country shouldn't move on. These guys need to be investigated with the full force of laws for their actions. In two years, there's going to be another administration, and I think America will be so relieved that we'll just try to sweep all this under the carpet and move on. But I hope not. I hope justice prevails and that we cut through the stink -- the shadiness that has defined this regime and get to the bottom of all the lies.

We deserve better. And the American people are smarter than this.

Rocket River · Jul 14, 2007

cur.ve said:

In two years, there's going to be another administration, and I think America will be so relieved that we'll just try to sweep all this under the carpet and move on. But I hope not. I hope justice prevails and that we cut through the stink -- the shadiness that has defined this regime and get to the bottom of all the lies.

We deserve better. And the American people are smarter than this.
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I am not so sure. . . .after this mess is cleaned up by the next admin
people will start searching for the next Monica Lewinski to bring about the down fall of the Admin that cleans this sh*t up

Then of course once it is cleaned up . . the proponents of this admin will
say SEE WE TOLD YOU IT WOULD WORK . . JUST NEEDED TIME FOR IT WORK
and
even say the horrors of this ADMIN is the result of problems with the previous ADMIN .. . and that they cleaned it up but it got ugly . .and we told you you would not see the results for many year. . . . blah blah blah

SPIN SPIN SPIN

Rocket River

rimrocker · Jul 17, 2007

No defenders yet... and imagine the moral OUTRAGE the right would feel if this were a Dem president using the death of a soldier for political purposes. The lack of condemnation is telling.

rimrocker · Jul 18, 2007

basso... you've been active lately... care to comment on the claim of executive privilege in this case?

Anyone at all defending the administration on this?

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Last Ranger to see Pat Tillman alive says told to conceal info

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Last Ranger to see Pat Tillman alive says told to conceal info

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