“The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons,” said the father, Patrick Tillman. “This cover-up started within minutes of Pat’s death, and it started at high levels. This is not something that (lower-ranking) people in the field do,” he said.
Tillman may have been, as Ann Coulter put it, “an American original — virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be.” But he was not the gung-ho, obedient, "my country right or wrong" warrior that the neo-con right has portrayed him to be.
Mary Tillman (Pat's mother) said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with (Noam) Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.”
“I can see it like a movie screen,” (Spc. Russell) Baer said. “We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin (Tillman, Pat's brother) and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all
said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.” Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry.
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