Pack93z
  • Pack93z
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14 years ago
Can't wait to see this documentary.. and what proof they have of the cover up of his death.. but more importantly more about this gentleman.. I still internally post the question to myself being in his position and making that choice to walk away from the NFL voluntarily.. as much as I would want to serve my country.. it would be hard to walk away from my dream.

Also curious but respectful of the families wishes not to release why he joined up..

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-tillman-20100820,0,5659182.story 


"The Tillman Story" is a story that won't go away, won't leave you alone, won't let you feel at ease. Intensely dramatic, filled with elevated heroism, crass self-interest and blatant stupidity, it's a paradigmatic narrative of our tendentious, turbulent times.

It's also a mark of how remarkable the tale of Pat Tillman is that no amount of retellings of its sequence of events how an NFL star turned Army Ranger turned Afghan war casualty turned unwilling and untrue national symbol can wear out the story's power or dilute its essential mystery. Too awful and too significant to fade from view, the actions contain everything that's right about this country as well as many of the things that are wrong.

So even though Amir Bar-Lev's documentary follows in the footsteps of two excellent books, one by Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, and one from Jon Krakauer, as well as a lengthy Sports Illustrated profile by Gary Smith, it is well worth everyone's time on its own.

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Compelling, compassionate and terribly moving, "The Tillman Story" will make you angry as well as sad. Even if you know what happened in broad outline, the specifics are shocking, and being able to actually see the principals and watch as the layers get peeled away like an onion is frankly devastating.

The first surprise of "The Tillman Story" is the character of Patrick Daniel Tillman himself, a man who, as a friend says, is definitely not the "meat-head jock" people might be expecting when they first hear his name.

Candid and questioning by nature, a free-spirited iconoclast who effortlessly went his own way, Tillman was a complicated man who was as excited by the possibility of meeting Noam Chomsky as a 12-year-old boy would be at the chance to meet this charismatic defensive back for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals.

Tillman was thrust into national prominence in 2002 when, at age 25 and in the wake of 9/11, he gave up his NFL career and, along with his brother Kevin, signed a three-year commitment with the U.S. military, instantly becoming "the most famous enlisted man in the Army."

In telling the story of how Tillman got to this point and what happened to him in life in Afghanistan as well as in death afterward, director Bar-Lev has benefited from the cooperation of Tillman's parents and Ranger colleagues, his widow Marie, and his younger brother Richard. (Kevin Tillman chose not to appear). Though, apparently at the family's urging, the director does not go deeply into the reasons Pat joined up, the film's portrait of his smart, passionate and persistent relatives is invaluable.

Whatever complex combination of reasons caused him to enlist, Tillman was far from delighted with the military. He was initially deployed to Iraq in 2003, which was problematic for him because he thought the war there was illegal. He could have secured an early discharge at the end of that year because of continued NFL interest in him, but he declined and was sent to Afghanistan. As Smith wrote in SI, few people realized "how wobbly a tightrope Pat walked between his integrity and his duty."

Then on April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed in a narrow canyon near the Afghani village of Magarah. The story of why and how he died and what the Army did about it is so infuriating and so damning in the several ways it played out that it can make you weep with rage.

Though it was immediately clear that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire, i.e. by his fellow Rangers, that information was carefully kept both from brother Kevin, who was nearby, and from the rest of Tillman's family back in the U.S.

What happened instead is that the Army brass and the Bush administration determined, in the most Orwellian way, to destroy physical evidence and use Tillman's death as a political propaganda tool to pump up domestic support of an unpopular war. So Tillman was awarded a Silver Star, something friendly fire victims are not eligible for, and pressure was placed on the family to give him a military funeral even though, as a friend told Krakauer, he'd insisted, "I don't want them to parade me through the streets."

But the strong-minded Tillmans turned out to be the wrong family to mislead. Though the Army eventually acknowledged the friendly fire death five weeks after the memorial service, the government answered the Tillmans' requests for more information by attempting to drown them in paperwork. With the help of Stan Goff, a retired special-ops soldier, they gradually discovered that things were even worse than they imagined.

For it turned out that Pat Tillman was not killed in some tragic but understandable late-night "fog of war" situation. Rather, his death was more like gross negligence, a case of an excess of macho behavior by inexperienced, trigger-happy individuals (reminiscent, in fact, of some of the folks we see in another war documentary, "Restrepo") who just wanted to blow things up. They shot Tillman, a man they knew, from less than the distance between second base and home plate on a baseball diamond.

Even more upsetting is how long the Army kept this fact secret, how hard the military fought to keep the truth from the Tillmans, and how high the coverup went, extending even to Gen. Stanley McChrystal (recently in the news when he was fired as U.S. commander in Afghanistan), if not even higher. Pat Tillman deserved so much more than this, which is why his story refuses to go away and why we should be glad that it's been told in such a persuasive manner.


"The oranges are dry; the apples are mealy; and the papayas... I don't know what's going on with the papayas!"
zombieslayer
14 years ago
Oh wow. I really want to see this, except it will probably just make me hate Bush more than I already do.

Tillman seemed like a real man and it's a shame how disrespectful they were to his family.

Pack - This may piss a few people off here, but if I had Tillman's talent and physical ability, I would have stayed in the NFL.

I have utmost respect for the fine men & women who serve, don't get me wrong, but the last few wars have been lies, lies, and more lies. Plus, look how they treat soldiers exposed to Agent Orange; how they treat soldiers with shell shock, etc. Heck, look how they covered up Gulf War Syndrome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome 
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Pack93z
  • Pack93z
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14 years ago
Yeah.. honestly.. I really don't have a clue what direction I would take.. In his position I had already made solid money.. but had a boatload more available to me while playing out my dream.. vs defending that very freedom we enjoy.

I think for me, that is the attraction to this film.. albeit they don't give the reason for the choice.
"The oranges are dry; the apples are mealy; and the papayas... I don't know what's going on with the papayas!"
zombieslayer
14 years ago
Not at all mocking anyone, but were we really defending freedom over there?

I've never been scared of terrorists. We got 300 million people and 370 million firearms in this country. Bring 'em on.

I'm more scared of us turning into a police state and that's the direction GWB took us.

Although if we killed every single last Taliban a-hole, it would have made the world a better place. But was that really our job? We should have gone all out to catch bin Laden, then put his head on the White House lawn as a reminder that this is what happens when you mess with us.

That's not what we did. Instead, we were full bore into Iraq and made catching bin Laden such a small priority that he got away. Afaik, bin Laden never stepped foot in Iraq. I blame GWB for him getting away.
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Pack93z
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14 years ago
Ahhh.. that is a conflicted subject for me as well.. and more so than not.. I personally think we have always been out of place in the middle east conflicts.. and probably in the end make them worse.

We.. no single entity is going to create peace in a region that harbors as strong possessive beliefs as those their do revolving around religion and money that have been there since the dawn of biblical man.
"The oranges are dry; the apples are mealy; and the papayas... I don't know what's going on with the papayas!"
zombieslayer
14 years ago
Pack - Not to mention there are too many people there for two few resources and they're not using birth control so the population keeps going up, and the problems will just get worse.

I'm going to get railed by Foster for this, but I think the best solution is to let themselves kill each other as they have been doing throughout history.

Let me be Zombiesladamus here and tell you the future - a thousand years from now, they will still be fighting in the Middle East no matter what we do as a nation.

Best thing to do is not have a presence. It only gives them a new group of people to hate. That's all that region has ever known throughout history. Says it in the Bible. Says it in every historical text written about that region.
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Pack93z
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14 years ago
The catch.. we are dependent upon that "Black Gold" so we mask our interest in the name of peace.

Until we as a nation let go of that dependency.. we will have our paws in.. wrongly of course but money talks.
"The oranges are dry; the apples are mealy; and the papayas... I don't know what's going on with the papayas!"
zombieslayer
14 years ago
Yeah, but that's another can of worms. You know how I feel about the black gold situation so I won't bring it up on Tillman's post.
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2010 will be seen as the beginning of the new Packers dynasty. 🇹🇹 🇲🇲 🇦🇷
Wade
  • Wade
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14 years ago
I admire and respect, greatly, Pat Tillman.

I admire and respect, greatly, those who serve in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

And that doesn't change even though I know the military has its share of boneheads among those serving. Even the jarheads have the occasional empty jar.

Nor does it change when I think the particular use of those who serve (e.g. in Iraq) is misguided, insane, or dumb.

But I don't respect much, or at all, most of the politicians and PR flacks who do the using -- whether they wear stars or suits, that is where the scorn and disgust belongs.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
Zero2Cool
14 years ago
If I didn't have a family, I would say the chances of going back to fullfill my "duty" would be far easier than if I had my kids.

With kids, no chance, I'd have stayed in the NFL to provide a better life for them.
Single, no kids and was an Army Ranger, I think it would have been a tough decision. If my brother was there, I can almost certainly say I'd go, because I have always felt the need to be there to look after my brother.
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