This is well done. Robin Williams manages to "humanize" and depict the personality of Betsy Ross's finest work, the American flag. His performance of "If I Was The American Flag – What Would I Tell You? He does it with his usual wacky humor and silliness but is underlined by his respect. 
Officers that are too gung ho about discipline, haircuts and "stateside crap" in a combat zone are just fragger fodder as far as I am concerned. The officers who "got it" didn't even wear insignia in combat operations in my war (Viet Nam), their leadership skills did more talking than just a symbol of rank and they didn't sweat the small stuff. If men are risking their lives in the bush every day who gives a rat's a** about spit shine?
"Just frag em and they won't bother us no more." Or wait until the right moment in a firefight and shoot that a**hole in the back, and what with all the confusion in combat the death is blamed on the enemy. Those officers who wanted to get back to the "world" kept their mouths shut and their six covered.
Having experienced how these things work in a combat zone first-hand, and in the chaos of a rear area I think it's a distinct possibility that Pat Tillman was fragged, shot in the head by his own troops who knew he was a friendly. He might have been just too much of a straight-shooter for his comrades to tolerate, who knows? Was he to be a witness in a court martial against someone? Did he bust some snuffies for drugs or thievery?
For now it seems the Tillmans are buying into the friendly fire version but I wouldn't be at all surprised if someday it came out that he was fragged. Maybe when all involved have made general, and retired where you can't touch them, the truth will come out.
What might be considered a tragic accident in layman's terms becomes this harmless little phrase that some hack in the Pentagon thought up to minimize it's impact. Whether it's an incident with fatalities or light injuries "friendly fire", is the military's worst oxymoron to date. I would rather see "Death by Friendly Forces." As a victim and survivor of "friendly fire" myself, I abhor this term and put it within quotation marks wherever it is used in this text as my way of denying it's legitimacy in our language. It's simply the result of our military again trying to find the politically correct way of to reduce the impact of troops being killed or injured – by their own forces.
Our military policy of cover-your-ass-at-all-costs has ruined many a career yet they still think that most of us just don't have the intellegence to see the whole picture. That's the excuse they always use, either that or national security is at stake. They will lie in your face and spin an issue 180 degrees to keep their hands clean. That's what they did with Pat Tillman, shamelessly using his death as a recruiting tool. It's a precarious position one has on the promotion ladder and it doesn't take much to miss a step and fall off. And when it comes to protecting careers, the military has taken CYA beyond science and made it an art form.
A person who is killed or wounded by "friendly fire" has been the victim of a terrible mistake at the hands of their own, yet it seems to have become accepted as a term that covers a broad range of tragic events; most common are "short rounds" (bad map co-ordinates called in by some lieutenant that was napping back in OCS when they were teaching him how to call in artillery – resulting in rounds falling on friendly positions).
Troops are wounded or killed accidentally by their own in a firefight gone haywire or by "fragging," a term from the Vietnam War, used by U.S. military personnel, that means to "kill that SOB officer that wants to put me out in the boonies" or "waste that lifer so he can't testify in my murder trial" of those civilians. In Vietnam this happened every day, in one command alone where I served in I Corps, we lost our exec and a senior NCO to fragging in a single day! To my knowledge no one was ever prosecuted for those crimes. (more…)
