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Author Jon Krakauer discusses the aftermath of Pat Tillman’s death and the lies of General Stanley McChrystal: “After Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within–instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There’s never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star. And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal–Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That’s why he was killed and the private wasn’t. Without friendly fire there’s no valor, there’s no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.”

This takes nothing away from the sacrifice Pat Tillman made for this country, but it does call into question the man in charge of turning Afghanistan around for other US Troops.

A friend’s son is currently steaming his way to Afghanistan (you remember: the place where we actually were fighting terrorists and making military progress until we pulled out most of our troops to send to Iraq).  He’s Marine Forces Recon and is being deployed as part of a ten-man Airborne jump team.

His mom seems (outwardly) stoic, but all I can do is flashback on news footage of crashed helicopters. Or on the tragic waste of a life in the Pat Tillman incident.  Not that he wasted his life, but that the  command structure was so cavalier in its own carelessness and incompetence that it essentially threw him away as if he were garbage. And then pissed on the grave by lying and covering up to his family.

Over 70 percent of the country want the troops home.  We elected a bunch of  new people in ‘06.  What more can we do to keep men like this from dying over there?  It’s not a rhetorical question:  what more must we do?  I don’t want this kid coming home in a bag so Bush can  look resolute.  What can we do?