For Our U.S. Military "Friendly Fire" Is Anything But

Posted November 19th, 2008 at 5:12 pm in Listen Up Marines!

"Friendly Fire" - Another Military Oxymoron

Just like "military intelligence," jokingly referred to by combat troops as a contradiction in terms where mass confusion and ineptness are more the rule than the exception. Or here is another example: "military justice" where verdicts can get passed down, based not, on guilt or innocence, but for reasons the brass calls; "for the good of the service." Yeah, whatever.

"Friendly fire" however, is much more than a figure of military speech combining one or more contradictory terms. But rather the military's way of evading and distorting an issue with words designed to reduce the impact of being killed by your own troops. They will try to spin it any way they can to use it to their advantage in a PR campaign like they did with Pat Tillman or they might trivialize it in order to protect careers. It's a precarious position one has on the promotion ladder and it doesn't take much to miss a step and get thrown off. And when it comes to careers, the military has taken CYA beyond science and made it an art form.

How can you call anything "friendly" when the condition it describes results in loss of life? A person who is killed or wounded by "friendly fire" has been the victim of a terrible mistake at the hands of their own. There is nothing friendly about it but yet it seems to have become accepted as this benign description of a broad spectrum of incidents where troops are killed by "friendly's" possibly hit by "short rounds" (bad map co-ordinates called in by some 1st looey that was napping back in OCS when they were teaching how to call in artillery). Troops are shot accidentally by their own side in a combat mission gone wrong 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!

It also applies to officers that are too gung ho about discipline, haircuts and "stateside crap." 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. 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? 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.

Former Combat Marine Is Diagnosed With PTSD After Tillman's Death

Pat Tillman's tragic death and the resulting lies that were told is the main reason I filed for disability for combat-related PTSD. It was a long buried (40 years) booby trap that was triggered when a personal hero of mine, Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. I cried when I heard that he had died a hero's death in combat and I was proud that he did what needed to be done. Then I was overcome with rage when they determined he had been shot by one of his own and they lied about it. This same sort of cover-up happened to me but I was one of the lucky ones, I survived multiple fragging attempts and managed to get out in one piece.

The subject was brought back to my attention recently by an article I read in the Arizona Republic by E.J. Montini for his Nov 18th column. It was an article about Kevin Tillman's first public appearance since 2006, when he wrote an essay for the website truthdig.com Reports entitled "After Pat's Birthday."

Kevin Tillman's shouts still silent and eloquent is an article that talks about Kevin Tillman's new book, The Transparent Pillage. It reads like a follow-up to his truthdig essay that read in part, "Somehow lying is tolerated. Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense. . . . Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is. It was motivated by the Tillman family's ordeal with a military machine that lied about the real cause of Pat Tillman's death in order to spin it into a propaganda campaign for the army. In case you don't recollect Kevin, but rather his more famous NFL football brother Pat Tillman, that's ok, Kevin is cool with that. He wants us instead to remember who the book is about and that it was his brother Pat, a great athlete who gave up a lucrative contract to play pro ball to enlist in the army. Enlisting together, in a fit of pure patriotism right after 9/11, they both became Army Rangers, went to Iraq in 2003, then in 2004, Afghanistan, where Pat was killed. at first the Army tried to make him a hero saying he was killed in combat by the enemy, when in fact, it turned out to be "friendly fire," an oxymoron if there ever was one. Montini writes about Kevin Tillmans new book titled, .

You may remember that Pat and Kevin kept the details of their enlistment low-key and shunned interviews from the press. They were just a couple of pissed-off patriots that thought they could make a contribution and didn't want to go all celebrity-hero about it. Kevin has lived up to his vow to remain relatively quiet but he has earned the right to speak the way he does. Like me he has suffered at the hands of the politic military establishment and has little use for any of them. It is just so unfair that through tragedy, the Tillman name was to become a rallying call for all combat veterans who have had to take one for the service at the hands of "military justice."

Kevin had not been heard from publicly for a long time after his family's ordeal with the US military where they originally tried to make his brother Pat Tillman out to be a hero who died in combat, when it was later proven that his death was as a result of fratricide (shot by his own troops) and not killed by the enemy. The US Army spun his "accidental" death into a silver star citation, "A True American Hero - Slain by the Enemy" that was labled "fiction" by Kevin Tillman and others who had served with Pat. It was a blatant attempt to foster propaganda in support of US foreign policy and shamelessly used as a recruiting tool. Kevin, in an emotional appearance before the The Committee on Oversight and Reform, at our nation's capital, he tells the real story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUCyr3B3IlM

It took years for the family to root out the truth about what happened and it might be years longer before we know what really happened.