Contributors

Monday, April 30, 2007

Lord, grant me patience

Tomorrow I will be putting my first stub up in my series of profiles on the 2008 Presidential Candidates. I will be ranking them each with a letter grade, starting with the worst candidate and ending with the best one. I have to admit that all of them, Republican and Democrat alike, are a full letter grade or more above President Bush, who stands at a F. So, regardless of who wins, our long national nightmare will finally be over.

And you know what? It really can't come too soon. I didn't think it was possible to be MORE nauseated by Bush Co and their chin-high level of bullshit but last week drove me even further over the edge. Last Tuesday the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard testimony from Jessica Lynch and Kevin Tillman. Remember Jessica Lynch? She was the young, Brittney Spears type who fought off the evil hoards of the enemy only to be captured, tortured, and raped. She was the "little girl Rambo" whose bravery was sung in praises over all the major media networks. And, in an intense firefight, she was rescued by the thinnest of margins by our freckled face kids at the front.

The entire story was a complete fabrication.

According to Lynch, "I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary." Lynch never fired a shot the day she was captured, she was never tortured or raped, and her "rescue" was more like an orderly transfer from hospital to another which met with no resistance whatsoever.

An even bigger lie is the story of Pat Tillman. Pat was an all star safety for the Arizona Cardinals when the September 11 attacks occurred. He and his brother, Kevin, joined the military to fight in Afghanistan. On April 22, 2004 Pat was killed in what the army described as an intense firefight with the enemy. This was a lie.

Pat was actually killed by friendly fire under circumstances that are still a mystery. Spc. Bryan O'Neal, the last man to see Tillman alive, says he was ordered by the Pentagon (Donald Rumsfeld) not to divulge how Pat died. Pat's body armour was burned so there would be no evidence that he was killed by friendly fire. According to his brother, Kevin and his mother, Mary, they believed the cover up occurred because the army wanted to deflect attention away from the Abu Gharib prison scandal. They needed a hero and they propped up Tillman as their poster boy for the War on Terror.

But was Pat really the hero they wanted? I mean, c'mon, the guy was extremely well read, supported John Kerry and urged others to do so, was friendly with Noam Chomsky, and (gasp!) was an atheist...clearly not someone who could be easily brainwashed. When questioned by the Tillman family in regards to Pat's death, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, Tillman's cross commander in Afghanistan (in a show of tremendous Christian empathy) told Mary Tillman that Pat "got what he deserved." He suggested that the reason they’d found no closure was that infidels such as themselves (the Tillmans do not belong to a church), when they die, are only “worm dirt.” Apparently Tillman told his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan that Iraq was "fucking illegal war" that was distracting America from the real enemy, Al Qaeda.

So....how did Pat really die? Was it accidental or did some of his fellow troops, their brains short-circuiting from not being able to process the truth, shoot Pat in a rage of jingoistic fervor? Nah, that couldn't be possible. I mean, c'mon, people aren't that far gone around the bend to believe everything that Bush Co spews at them, right? RIGHT? Well, actually, they are.

Last Monday, President George W Bush, in between his tribal dance lesson and sticking pins in his Harry Reid doll, received a purple heart. How did our commander in chief receive an award which is reserved for troops who are wounded in combat? Bill Thomas, a decorated Vietnam vet from Copperas Cove, Texas, came up with idea of presenting President Bush with HIS purple heart to the president because he felt that Bush had endured "unprecedented verbal attacks, both foreign and domestic, during his time in office. We felt like emotional wounds and scars are as hard to carry as physical wounds," Thomas said.

"I just threw up in my mouth," Markadelphia said as he heard this story of unfathomable zombiesm. As one of my co-workers, also decorated with a Purple Heart from Vietnam, told me when I relayed this story to him, "That a man who made that sacrifice for our country can be so deluded as to give his Purple Heart (like it was a used car) to rich man's son whose daddy got him out of action (or could even bring it upon himself to serve with his Texas unit) is obscene beyond words."

More obscene is the fact that there are still around 90 million people (29 percent) in this country that believe that we are fighting for freedom in Iraq in order to protect ourselves from future terrorist attacks and that oil has got nothing to do with it. These same 90 million people also believe that Jesus Christ is coming back this year, we are in the final days, and if we don't do exactly what they tell us to do, all of us will be "left behind." So, as I kick off my presidential profiles series, ask yourselves this question:

Isn't it time to stop letting the loonies run the asylum?

Tuesday: John McCain.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, the Tillman incident is sickening. People in this country don't fully understand the depths to which these people will sink.

But Mark, everyone gets full letter grade above Bush? Even Guilliani with his "if a Democrat wins, terrorists will bomb us" bullshit?

Anonymous said...

Could you supply a couple of links to the background stories that reported those incidents? In particular, the Lynch and Tillman stories...

Thanks

Mark Ward said...

Do you mean the current reports on their testimony or the original reports of the incidents back in 2003 and 2004?

Anonymous said...

...a little of both. I know the basics of the stories but have not heard those particulars and was interested to evaluate on my own. I'll do a little digging, but if you have some links, it would save me some time.

Mark Ward said...

Sure. For Pat Tillman check out this link.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266409,00.html

Scroll down to Colonel Hunt's answer in the middle of the page.

For more basic info, click here

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Apr11/0,4670,TillmanLynch,00.html

On the coverup...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,262920,00.html

Pat Tillman timeline...

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=tillmantimeline

Quote from Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich...

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=tillmanpart1

Mary and Kevin Tillman also testified before Congress about Col. Kauzlarich and what he told them during the course of the investigation. All of this was on C Span and I'm sure the video is out there somewhere...I saw it live.

As far as Jessica Lynch goes, I saw most of her tesimony live on C Span and the searched old news articles, most from Fox, MSNBC, and CNN about her story. There is so much stuff out there on her....you can pick whatever you want.

Anonymous said...

Well, what can I say…? From further reading, it looks a bit more of a cover-up than what I read about it back when it happened. But is it news? Unfortunately, friendly fire incidents happen. And if those guys were negligent, which it really looks like they were, particularly more so for burning the armor (which was done perhaps to hide their negligence??), then they may have traipsed into criminal territory and they should be prosecuted. Which I believe is being pursued, no? (If they're not and indeed there was criminal wrong doing (hard to prove in a combat zone), then that's news.)

I don’t know if I’d take it all the way to the top, though. In a growingly unpopular war, just as news accounts on some networks tend to focus more on the negatives, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Army was looking to utilize Tillman’s celebrity status as a bit of PR and his death, albeit terrible, to promote him as a hero. But then stepped all over themselves when the friendly fire revelation became undeniable.

Your worm comment is quite out of context, I think. By the articles you posted here, Kauzlarich’s comment were to the interviewer while trying to explain why he thought Tillman’s family was still pursuing the issue when many other family’s would had lost loved ones in friendly fire incidents were not. His reference was to why they may not have had the same type of closure with the death that more religious families had. You make it out to be him chastising the family, which unless you have other evidence, just isn’t the case.

I’d not heard in any report that Jessica Lynch was raped or beaten until your post, but from my cursory search beyond what I knew of the story from early on, it is again, nothing special. Even the BBC reports (which are no friend of the US) say it was sexed up but don’t mention anything like that. So the Army found a good story and wanted to blow it up a bit for PR? What’s wrong with that? The media is beating them down on a daily basis, it seems logical that the Army would do its most to sex up a relatively basic rescue for a little public relations boost. Certainly a man like John Kerry can appreciate sexing up a basic combat incident?

…haven’t found much on the Bush getting the Purple Heart deal except on the lefty blogs. But, it’s not from the military, so it’s really just a bunch of symbolism isn’t it? The guy giving it to him might be an over zealous quack, but big deal. Is that any more over zealous than White House correspondent Nina Burleigh stating she’d give Bill Clinton oral sex just because of his stance on abortion??

…looking forward to your articles on the candidates…there’s nothing too hot to debate here.

Mark Ward said...

The worm comment was based not solely on the article but on testimony given by the Tillman family. I saw what she said in C Span...maybe it is on You Tube now?

I think Rumsfeld knew but I don't think Bush did...about Tillman that is....people are trying to find out about that memo and if it got to Bush but I haven't seen anything real concrete yet..

As far as Lynch goes, I remember all major news stations reporting that she was raped and so did Rick Bragg, former New York Times writer, who wrote the book I Am A Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story. He claimed, and the meida picked this up, that she was raped anally based on medical records and her pattern of injuries. The Iraqi doctors that were there said she was not raped and Lynch says she has no memory of being raped or assaulted in any way.

Anonymous said...

Good post. I think it is pathetic. I do actually like Col. Hunt- he knows my brother, Joe, who is a Navy SEAL-Hunt is pretty obnoxious and a typically politically incorrect military guy-but even so, he is very critical of Bush. If he actually were in charge of this war we'd have been out of there so long ago, we wouldn't be in this disgusting quagmire.

As far as the purple heart- what a mockery. Even if it was just given to Bush by some loony tune and not an official act. How could Bush even accept it? What nerve that moron has!!