Unpatriotic War Hero's Parents

Leonard Pitts was ahead of the curve again this week in his column regarding the parents of Pat Tillman. Have you notice how any of us who criticized Bush's Iraq invasion policy were quickly called "unpatriotic" by right wing neocon supporters? Pitts did too.

After all, those who defend the present administration against charges of misinformation and misdirection have never been above a little character assassination where its critics are concerned.

Their favorite tactic is to shout down dissent by yelling ''Unpatriotic!'' whenever it rears its head.

His question, which is the focal point of this column, is to ask what these patriotic Bush supporting, pro-war people will say to the parents of NFL star Pat Tillman, who quit playing football to join the military and died in Afghanistan? Tillman died to friendly fire, but the government lied about it in the press and tried to paint him as a poster boy.

So what will they say about the war hero's folks? Surely they'll have to say something.

In interviews with The Washington Post published this week, Mary Tillman and Patrick Tillman Sr., parents of slain Army Ranger Pat Tillman, blasted the Army for ''lying'' about their son's death.

The younger Tillman, you will recall, was the Arizona Cardinals football player who, after Sept. 11, famously turned his back on a $3.6 million contract in order to join the military.

When he was killed in a firefight in Afghanistan last year, Tillman became a human recruiting poster, an icon of selfless patriotism who supposedly died while shouting orders and exhorting his men to take the fight to the enemy.

The Post reported in December that the Army knew, but did not tell his family or the nation until weeks later, that this version of the story was . . . incomplete.

The fact is, investigators determined fairly quickly that Tillman died of so-called friendly fire; he was accidentally killed by another squad of Army Rangers and died yelling, ``Cease fire! Friendlies!''

''The military let him down,'' Mary Tillman told The Post. ``The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting.''

Disgusting indeed. Pitts has a lot of good comments on the subject, which I'll leave for you to read, but I thought I'd check on with some of the more rabid wingnut bloggers and try to determine if Pitts' predictions were true. I did a full search on Michelle Malkin, Powerline and Captain's Quarters. Surprisingly, and to their credit, none of the three had a post criticizing Tillman's parents. There was, however, something else I noticed which was rather odd. Check out these search results.

• Search of Powerline for "Tillman"
• Search of Captain's Quarters for "Tillman"
• Search of Michelle Malkin for "Tillman"

Powerline has a single link in a tiny post entry. I'll paste it in here in its entirely since it's so small.

The Washington Post is running a long, two-part report on the combat death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan last April. Today's first part is "Barrage of bullets drowned out cries of comrades."

That's it. If you go read the article, (and not everyone bothers clicking on links) you'll find out that friendly fire was involved, but Powerline has not one peep to say about the US coverup of the situation.

Michelle Malkin offers even less. For her, there is only one recent entry. "Pat Tillman: American Hero." And he certainly was. But all Malkin mentions (with no links) is that he turned down a very large NFL salary to go fight. If you get your "news" from Malkin, you' know nothing about this.

Captain's Quarters owner Ed Morrisey has a grand total of one post which has a link to the friendly fire coverage. And it's not even in a post on the subject. It's a post about how the MSM was failing to provide coverage of the "Gang of 14" compromise, and how the media were wasting their time with other stories, including the Tillman issue. Again... no comments, no reporting.

And these are the blogs who will make up the backbone of some new "pajama news" blog oriented "news service?" Oh, yeah. We don't need any MSM, do we? Why should we, when you can get all the news that's fit to print from these Bush acolytes?