Tillman
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HINGTON – Pat Tillmans brother accused the military Tuesday of “intentional falsehoods” and “deliberate and careful misrepresentations” in portraying the football stars death in
Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.
“We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public,” Kevin Tillman told a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearing. “Pats death was clearly the result of fratricide,” he said.
“Revealing that Pats death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters so the truth needed to be suppressed,” said Tillman, who was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened three years ago but didnt see it.
The committees chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., accused the government of inventing “sensational details and stories” about Pat Tillmans death and the 2003 rescue of Jessica Lynch, perhaps the most famous victims of the Afghanistan and
Iraq wars.
Lynch, then an Army private, was badly injured when her convoy was ambushed in Iraq. She was subsequently rescued by American troops from an Iraqi hospital but the tale of her ambush was changed into a story of heroism on her part.
Still hampered by her injuries, Lynch walked slowly to the witness table and took a seat alongside Tillmans family members.
“The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they dont need to be told elaborate tales,” Lynch said.
Kevin Tillman said his family has sought for years to get at the truth about Pat Tillmans death, and have now concluded that they were “being actively thwarted by powers that are more interested in protecting a narrative than getting at the truth and seeing justice is served.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings (news, bio, voting record), D-Md., questioned how high up the chain of command the information about Tillmans friendly fire death went, and whether anyone in the White House knew before Tillmans family.
Pat Tillmans mother, Mary Tillman, said she believed former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld must have known. “The fact that he would have died by friendly fire and no one told Rumsfeld is ludicrous,” she said.
Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, after his Army Ranger comrades were ambushed in eastern Afghanistan. Rangers in a convoy trailing Tillmans