The Search for Truth on Tillman Continues

Four years ago, I wrote this angry dispatch after learning of the death of the heroic Pat Tillman--NFL star turned volunteer American military grunt. I would have been far angrier if I had known at the time that his death had actually been from so-called "friendly fire." In other words, he was killed by his own side. And even worse, that his government would try to cover that up. Much of the world may have gone on to fresher outrages, but I'm glad to see that his family isn't letting it go. His mother has now written a book about the case, which should put it back in the news, where it belongs. She talks about it here with The Nation. It's bitterly ironic that it happens to arrive just as a former Bush White House press secretary pulls the veil back and provides intriguing confirmation of what we already knew: that the White House engaged in the worst form of propaganda in selling the Iraq war. As I said four years ago: "this war has been a disaster unique in American history, for which the architects must pay with their jobs and then their reputations, their names dragged through the mud of history as the bullies and cowards they are." I'm glad to watch that remorseless process continue.