2011-05-03

Tillman, Lynch and bin Laden

After coming under fire, Tillman’s patrol got out of their vehicles and gave chase, moving toward the spot of the ambush. Beevers said the fighting was “sustained” and lasted 15-20 minutes.
Beevers said Tillman was killed by enemy fire, but he had no information about what type of weapons were involved in the assault, or whether he died instantly
SAN FRANCISCO – Within hours of Pat Tillman’s death, the Army went into information-lockdown mode, cutting off phone and Internet connections at a base in Afghanistan, posting guards on a wounded platoon mate, and ordering a sergeant to burn Tillman’s uniform.
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Nearby on the same base, a staff sergeant was in his tent when a captain walked in and told him to burn Tillman’s bloody clothing.
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Two other sergeants who examined Tillman’s vest noticed the bullet holes appeared to be from 5.56-caliber bullets — signature American ammunition. An awful realization dawned on the sergeants, whose names, like those of others who testified in the investigation, were deleted from the recently released testimony.
http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2007/04/20/48990-army-ordered-tillman-s-uniform-burned-within-hours-of-death/

Jessica Lynch. You know the one. The sweet, American-pie 19-year-old soldier and kindergarten-teacher wanna-be whose army squad took a wrong turn in Iraq and was, apparently, ambushed.
And some of her comrades were killed and she was taken prisoner, full of stab wounds and bullet holes, and she was whisked off to a ragged Iraqi hospital and held for eight days by vicious Iraqi guards and ostensibly abused, and later supposedly "rescued" in the most daring and macho made-for-TV moment of the war by elite teams of hunky U.S. Army Rangers and U.S. Navy SEALs. Wow.
Except that it never really happened that way. Except that Lynch herself doesn't remember a single thing and all the nurses and doctors and eyewitnesses on the scene say the Iraqi fedayeen guards had fled the day before the "rescue," and there was no danger whatsoever, no resistance of any kind, the U.S. forces could just walk right in, and they knew it.
And the hospital doors were wide open, and the nurses and doctors had gone out of their way to provide decent care for our precious Jessica, considering the circumstances, and doctors even tried to return Lynch to U.S. forces themselves.
And despite U.S. claims, Lynch had no knife wounds or bullet holes at all, just a few broken bones, and the dramatic and violent "rescue" was really just inane and silly and entirely faked and yet America bought it, hook, line and Rumsfeld, because it was on TV.
And now, here we are. Jessica and disgraced N.Y. Times reporter Rick "Oh my God do I need a gig" Bragg just inked a $1 million book deal to tell her nonstory, titled "I'm a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story," not "Oh My God You Are Such a Sucker for Buying This Book I Mean Wow."
Because this is how we fabricate our history. This is how we spin our patriotism, how we bake our jingoistic cake, the Lynch tale the most apt and definitive myth of the war so far.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0905-09.htm

WASHINGTON – Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the US President John Brennan said that Osama bin Laden was involved in a firefight with US forces when he was killed on Sunday in Pakistan.
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The order was given to take bin Laden alive if possible, but if encountering likely resistance, he could be killed on sight, according to Brennan. He said bin Laden was killed in the firefight, along with his son, two couriers at the house and his wife, the latter of whom appeared to have been used as a human shield.
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=218906
White House officials can't get their story straight about what happened in the Pakistani compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed. Though officials have clarified that he was shot twice -- in the head and in the chest -- reports from Monday that Bin Laden was using a woman, probably his wife, as a human shield so he could fire back at U.S. troops are now being backpedaled on, horrifying and villainous as they are. "He was firing behind her," an anonymous official said Monday morning. Later on Monday, an official told Politico, "I'm not aware of him having a weapon." Another official gave conflicting information that, "A different guy's wife was killed, while Bin Laden's wife was "injured but not killed." A separate official said no woman was used as a human shield.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/05/osama_bin_laden_wife_human_shield_death_photo.php