Quote :

"Like when you're a kid and your mom busts you smoking weed in your room, and is all "Why are you sitting by the window? What's going on here, mister?" What's the first thing you do? You cop to smoking cigarettes, and boy does she get upset, but at least she's not making you go to counseling and take weekly drug tests."

Awww geez. Do the analogy police know about this one?

7/28/2007 12:34:25 PM

Quote :

"That's what I'm saying. They wanted a PR event over this. To distract us."

Nah. I don't buy it.

They don't need Pat Tillman to distract us, shit we barely pay attention as it is. Foil a terrorist plot, put a former Marine on American Idol, announce that cupcakes give you AIDS . . . killing a well known public hero? Why?

7/28/2007 1:43:11 PM

This is interesting.

Quote :

"SAN FRANCISCO -- As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like, 'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now.'" Tillman's intent, O'Neal said, was to "more or less put my mind straight about what was going on at the moment." "He said, 'I've got an idea to help get us out of this,'" said O'Neal, who was an 18-year-old Army Ranger in Tillman's unit when the former NFL player was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004. O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, O'Neal said. A chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman's death later described this exchange to investigators conducting a criminal probe of the incident. But O'Neal strongly disputes portions of the chaplain's testimony, outlined in some 2,300 pages of transcripts released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The chaplain told investigators that O'Neal said Tillman was harsh in his last moments, snapping, 'Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..." "He never would have called me 'sniveling,'" O'Neal said. "I don't remember ever speaking to this chaplain, and I find this characterization of Pat really upsetting. He never once degraded me. He's the only person I ever worked for who didn't degrade anyone. He wasn't that sort of person." ... Soldiers and commanders who worked with Tillman have repeatedly testified that he was respected, admired and well-liked. In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away. O'Neal said the shooters were "close, close enough for me to recognize them, but they sure weren't 10 yards away. They were further than that. I've thought about this plenty of times. They wouldn't have been more than 50 yards away." Another key issue raised in the transcripts involved never-before-mentioned snipers who were apparently there when the firing broke out, got out of their vehicle and walked alongside the convoy, cutting up the canyon firing. O'Neal said Saturday that he knew there were snipers in the convoy that fired at them, but that he can't remember their names. Were they fired at by the snipers? "Not that I know of," O'Neal told the AP. "

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Tillman_Friendly_Fire.html

7/28/2007 9:57:06 PM

Quote :

""Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!""

Quote :

"Does that sound natural at all to anyone? Substitute in your name for Pat Tillman and see if it sounds natural."

Maybe he thought people should recognize his name since he played in the nfl.

7/29/2007 2:11:55 AM

or maybe since it was their own unit who were (apparently) firing on them, he thought they might know his name.

7/29/2007 2:16:46 AM

Quote :

"This is interesting."

not really, if thats how things played out the guy is not going to admit to it and get himself or someone else in trouble

7/29/2007 6:35:42 AM

who says sniveling? besides villians in scooby doo.

7/29/2007 5:57:44 PM

ruh roh.

7/29/2007 8:52:49 PM

I'm a little disappointed that with your 1-per-week topic, you did something as weak as this. I was hoping you'd expose how we Jews are responsible for airborne illnesses. Maybe next week?

7/30/2007 6:29:30 PM

It usually depends on whats at the top of prisonplanet on the given day that he decides to post a topic.

7/30/2007 8:04:08 PM

hah. i'll bet you're right.

7/30/2007 9:09:45 PM

...

i'm going to read this thread more carefully later, but if you look at what is going on outside of the fact that this is presented by salisburyboy Tillman's death is incredibly suspicious

[Edited on July 30, 2007 at 9:16 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2007 9:16:23 PM

^ agreed.

i'm not ready to go so far as to say the government ordered his death... but the circumstances of his death, and the resulting cover-up (either intentional or due to gross ineptitude) is extremely suspicious.

it reinforces a tendency to automatically disbelieve anything that comes out of a government spokesman's mouth.




[Edited on July 30, 2007 at 9:22 PM. Reason : ]

7/30/2007 9:20:24 PM

i mean, he really was an intellectual, digged Chomsky (both of which goes against all images of this dude we were fed), we already know the government covered up the friendly fire incident and now this close grouping of rounds that seem to be from 10 yards away

this is really weird and spooky

[Edited on July 30, 2007 at 9:24 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2007 9:24:01 PM

^

Quote :

"O'Neal said the shooters were "close, close enough for me to recognize them, but they sure weren't 10 yards away. They were further than that. I've thought about this plenty of times. They wouldn't have been more than 50 yards away.""

The government wouldn't have killed an E-4 just because he thought that the Iraq War was illegal and that he told one guy to vote for John Kerry. I'm sure that there are a good number of people with higher rank and more clout that feel the same way as he did.

If anything they were trying not to look incompetent as Tillman was killed just as Abu Ghraib was coming to light.

[Edited on July 30, 2007 at 9:28 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2007 9:28:17 PM

Quote :

"The government wouldn't have killed an E-4 just because he thought that the Iraq War was illegal and that he told one guy to vote for John Kerry. I'm sure that there are a good number of people with higher rank and more clout that feel the same way as he did. "

really... are you sure about that?

7/30/2007 9:31:26 PM

.

[Edited on July 30, 2007 at 9:33 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2007 9:32:36 PM

wait, the not killing an E-4 part or other people feeling the same way?

7/30/2007 9:33:07 PM

i'm not here to "prove" anything, asshat

i'm just saying that this whole this is starting to really stink

[Edited on July 30, 2007 at 9:35 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2007 9:33:48 PM

I'd imagine that its a pretty high-risk/low-reward scenario when you start asking rangers if they want to kill one of their buddies because he might meet Noam Chomsky when he gets home.

But you're probably right since you called me asshat.

7/30/2007 9:39:40 PM

^ Exactly.

Rangers have their reputation for the swiftness, violence, and intensity with which they execute their actions. At 50 yards, in a firefight, when you're shooting at silhouettes, guns are going off all around you, and don't have the time to try and identify the distinguishing features on each target, this kind of thing can and will happen.

Quote :

"I'm sure that there are a good number of people with higher rank and more clout that feel the same way as he did."

Marine Corps General Zinni opposed the war, former chairman of the JCS, Army GEN Shalikashvili opposed the war, I think it is safe to assume that privately GEN Powell opposed the war, GEN Westley Clark opposed the war; so yeah, this former NFL player posed a massive threat to national security. Again, I'm not saying the government doesn't do shady shit, just that this isn't one of those cases.



Oh, and I hear sniveling on a pretty regular basis at work, and I'm skeptical of any reporting that claims to have the details to a massive government coverup but can't get the nomenclature of a Ranger's standard weapon right, they carry M4s not M16s.

[Edited on July 30, 2007 at 10:04 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2007 10:02:15 PM

Yes, it sucked, it was friendly "freaking" fire that killed him, no more and no less. Shit happens, I would attribute at least +3% of American KIA's in Afghanistan & Iraq to fratricide, at least.

It is a historical problem throughout war fighting, but we are getting better.

8/5/2007 12:37:43 PM