May 6 - Whose Calling the Plays at the Pentagon?

This is only tangentially related to sports, but I am really shocked the Department of Defense isn’t taking more flak for this extraordinary story involving Pat Tillman, It took a year, but the Washington Post reported this week that the Army had found out within days of Tillman’s death that the former Cardinal was killed by fellow Rangers in a “gross act of negligence,” yet it didn’t reveal such details to Tillman’s family or the public until weeks after his nationally televised memorial service. Does the Defense Department have no shame? Listen, I understand the jingoistic Pentagon has long tried to control the news flow during wartime, but this is going way too far. To manufacture a story like this, in the name of promoting heroism, is the kind of stuff the Germans pulled during World War I to boost morale at home. Pat Tillman’s heroism needed no boost – he was a hero long before he was ever killed on that Afghan mountain. Regardless of how he died, his story was moving and it sure didn't need an assist from a Pentagon publicist. But I guess the brass in Virginia figured at the time that the country needed a good story and hell would freeze over before that story came with friendly fire ending. So what did the Pentagon do? They buried the truth because it conflicted with the kind of story they wanted to write. Pure and simple – this was wartime propaganda at its worst. I am sure the department’s top officials – both civilian and military – have had many concerns with the way this war has been covered in the press, but I can’t recall a major NEWS piece appearing that was completely fabricated. It’s almost as if Steven Glass from the New Republic and Jason Blair from the New York Times are now on the military’s payroll. With incidents like this, is it any wonder that the public distrusts what the War Department chooses to disclose?