Liberal: Time for the truth
By: Andrew Bullock, Liberal Columnist
While thousands of young men and women have died in the last few years defending our nation at war, a few incidents involving individual soldiers have been highly publicized. One of the most hyped and recently controversial combat deaths is that of Pat Tillman, the former NFL player who walked away from a $3.6 million contract to serve as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tillman’s death, which occurred in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, was initially ruled as a result of enemy fire. However, an initial investigation by the Army concluded that Tillman was in fact killed by his own men in a friendly fire incident, and another investigation came to show that no hostile forces ever engaged Tillman and his men, and, in fact, the exchange of fire occurred between confused American and allied Afghan soldiers.
Friendly fire is an unfortunate reality in the modern combat zone, but the actions taken by Tillman’s men on the ground and the public relations coverup committed by the military are simply unacceptable. It has been revealed that Tillman’s men burned his body armor, as an apparent attempt to conceal the fact that American gunfire killed him, rather than Taliban resistence.
Furthermore, the military fabricated an entire story about a battle that never happened between the Army Rangers on the ground and enemy combatants in order to glorify Tillman’s death. Tillman’s family was not informed of the friendly fire incident until weeks after his funeral, despite the fact that many senior military officials already knew.
This particular incident is a mere snapshot of the constant deception and propaganda issued by our nation’s military. Unfortunately for the Pentagon, families as determined as Tillman’s refuse to rest until the truth can be found.
Take the “heroic” story of Jessica Lynch, the female private first class who was captured by Iraqi forces and subsequently rescued behind enemy lines by American soldiers. Although it was widely reported that Lynch engaged in ferocious combat with Iraqi troops during the ambush in Nasiriya, she in fact concluded that she never fired a shot, and was knocked unconscious as soon as her convoy crashed.
It was also reported that Lynch was grossly mistreated by her savage Iraqi captors, when in fact she was cared for as much as anyone could expect, given the fact that she was in a hospital during wartime in a Third World enemy of the United States. Once again, this entire story was an elaborated ploy by our military to win the false hopes of everyday Americans. So our military is giving celebrity status to combat dead and injured; it could be worse, right? It is.
Take the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, which resulted in diabetes, birth defects, cancers, and psychological disorders for American soldiers returning home. It took until the 1980s for recognition of this travesty and subsequent lawsuits to ensure that the shattered lives of our veterans and their families could be somewhat rebuilt.
More recently, the use of depleted uranium in armaments fired in the first Gulf War resulted in a condition known as Gulf War Syndrome, which has yielded higher fatality rates than Agent Orange use in Vietnam. The very existence of this disorder is being concealed by our military, and the use of an anthrax vaccine could also be the source of various illnesses and birth defects; once again the true cause of these ailments is being hidden.
The bottom line is that young men and women of our military are merely human pawns once the battle gets underway, and the propaganda machine run by our Pentagon will continue to distort facts. It is my hope that our military will begin to care more about the lives of our soldiers, and not (directly or indirectly) expose them to harmful chemical agents simply because they slightly improve the American advantage on the battlefield—the health of our loved ones can never be sacrificed.
While psychological operations and propaganda are key tools in the struggle against the enemy, our own people should not be subjected to the same treatment. Our military must tell the truth to the families that have been adversely affected by combat operations, or friendly fire for that matter. Our people are only being harmed by deception and false information, and the forces sworn to protect us should not be subjected to propaganda from our leadership.
Last update: 2007-05-09