Political Football
While surfing the NFL's web site, I ran across one of their best-selling items, a Pat Tillman jersey, with proceeds benefitting the Pat Tillman Foundation.
Tillman is the first NFL player to die in combat since the Vietnam War and the first NFL veteran to receive the Silver Star . . .
Frank Rich elaborates on "The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman":
On April 30, an official Army press release announcing his Silver Star citation filled in vivid details of his last battle. Tillman, it said, was storming a hill to take out the enemy, even as he “personally provided suppressive fire with an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun.”
It would be a compelling story, if only it were true. Five weeks after Tillman’s death, the Army acknowledged abruptly, without providing details, that he had “probably” died from friendly fire. Many months after that, investigative journalists at The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times reported that the Army’s initial portrayal of his death had been not only bogus but also possibly a cover-up of something darker. “The records show that Tillman fought bravely and honorably until his last breath,” Steve Coll wrote in The Post in December 2004. “They also show that his superiors exaggerated his actions and invented details as they burnished his legend in public, at the same time suppressing details that might tarnish Tillman’s commanders.”
Since we now know that Tillman actually died from friendly fire, does this mean that anyone who wears a Tillman football jersey risks being tackled by his own teammates?
10:42:31 PM 
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