Apr 24 2007
Democrats Out To Besmirch War Heroes
Not only are Congressional Democrat Leaders out to surrender to al Qaeda, make our troops targets by giving the enemy the impression that a few more spectacular deaths and Reid and company will be annointed Prime Minister of America, but now they are going to drag two of our finest through the public spectacle of partisan hearings just to use dead and injured heroes as polititical props:
The federal government invented “sensational details and stories” about the death of Pat Tillman and the rescue of Jessica Lynch, perhaps the most famous victims of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, a House chairman charged Tuesday.
Lynch, walking slowly, took her seat at the witness table along with members of Tillman‘s family.
Lynch, then an Army private, was badly injured when her convoy was ambushed in Iraq in 2003. She was subsequently rescued by American troops from an Iraqi hospital but the tale of her ambush was changed into a story of heroism on her part.
Lawmakers planned to press the Pentagon with questions still hovering over the shooting of Tillman, a one-time National Football League star: Was a Predator drone flying overhead when Tillman was killed? Did it videotape the incident?
Investigations have concluded that the Army new quickly that Tillman‘s death in Afghanistan three years ago was the result of friendly fire but withheld the news from his family, instead offering up a story of a heroic Tillman facing down the enemy.
“Revealing that Pat‘s death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters … so the truth needed to be suppressed,” said Tillman, who was in a convoy behind his brother but didn‘t see the incident.
This is sickening. Pat Tillman WAS facing down the enemy – he was providing cover for retreating forces, as I recall. His death was the result of back up forces mistaking his cover fire for attacking fire from enemies. These vultures do not support our troops – they want to use their deaths and injuries to make propaganda hay. They are using the pain of family to makes emotional charges.
Watch what they say today – it will be filled with faux concerns used as cover to belittle the military that these heroes served proudly. It will by ugly. Really, really ugly. Al Qaeda praises their heroes. Dems drag their good names through a show trial.
Addendum: This is the part of the Vietnam Syndrome where the Dems will use these stories and John Kerry wannabes to claim all sorts of horrors and besmirch the military. The baby killer claims and spitting are not far behind. Tillman died from the unfortunately all too common problems of war – friendly fire. He was not the first or the last. But there is no PROOF this was an attempt to hide the facts for political gain. Anymore than there was proof of the atrocities John Kerry testified to on Vietnam. The only difference is we do KNOW the difference – having Kerry as a reminder of what lengths some will go to for political gain.
No sorry , evidently I am not as well read as you.
Make sure to put the blame on the Democrats.
I just saw a note at powerline on this and they said that the incident with Tillman happened on April 22, 2004 and the Army went public with the fact that it was friendly fire on May 29, 2004. One month delay and we are hearing about this three years later.
Terrye
At this point the Dems would shout it out if they could maybe prove GWB gave a wedgie to a sixth grade classmate.
Commenter “Pagar” over at RedState summed up the Dem’s strategy quite nicely:
“The Democrat leaders have to discredit the US military. They know that there are still Americans who have more faith in the US military than they do in the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party leaders know they can not bring this country under their complete control while Americans still believe in the US military. Today’s hearings are not designed to make the military better. They are designed to discredit the US military.
“Sen Reid’s refusal to believe the American General in charge in Iraq, is to convey the same message. One can not trust the US military, one can only trust the US Democrats. “
One observation of my own, or maybe it’s more of a question:
Whose responsibility would it be to bring charges of sedition (at best) or treason (at worst) against Reid and other Dems if they take this thing too far? Would that be the role of the Attorney General’s office, by any chance?
I noticed nobody has anything to say about the other half of this story. I knew at the time that the Jessica Lynch story came out that there was a whole lot of garbage attached to it. This whole thing about an injured hundred pound teenage girl picking up her M-16 and holding off the enemy until the last round was always a bunch of garbage used to endorse the policy of putting women into ground combat which is being done without an actual change in policy or any debate to make a decision about it.
The truth about Jessica Lynch is this, she volunteered to serve her country in uniform, she followed her orders honorably like a good soldier and went into harms way with her unit. She was badly injured in combat and was captured by an enemy which she had too know did not treat their prisoners well. She was probably scared to death like anyone else would be. She was treated barbarically by her captives and suffered a lot in captiviy. She was rescued thanks to the help of an Iraqi doctor and his wife who humanely took sympathy on her and alerted our forces to where she was. She is a hero in the sense that any other soldier who went through the same thing is a hero and I salute her service. I further commend her in telling the truth about her actions and disputing the ridiculous embellishments that somebody chose to attach to her story. She never once went along with that crap.
The whole reason that this story was lied about to such a great extent was that somebody did not want America to be thinking about that young woman being repeatedly raped and tortured because they did not want to face a debate about women in combat. This story was a black mark on the people within the military and government who perpetuated the lie but not a black mark on Lynch or the U.S. Military as a whole. Kudos to Jessica for standing up for truth.
Bikerken
The military didn’t perpetuate the lie, they couldn’t say anything during the investigation, the media is the guilty culprit on that. It’s how they make money, blow something up to mythic proportions, get advertisers in, make the money, and then point fingers later when the truth comes out. They are worse the grave robbers at times.
Bikerken: scroll halfway up, and read my LONG post! You are correct!
Dale:
Here is probably the most accurate description of the Jessica Lynch story you will find from someone who was there at the time.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/568yzazb.asp?pg=1
By his account and the radio intercepts it wasn’t a woman doing the fighting it was Sgt Donald Waters since both woman had been involved in the hummer crash with the truck in front of them. Piestawa was so critically injured she died soon after from her injuries. And Lynch’s injuries left her near death. Well read the article Mr. Lowry does a better job describing it then I especially since he was there.
Scaulen: thanks for that; hadn’t seen it before; huh, I heard from someone “close”; who said the intercept was about Piestawa; interesting, but I have no reason to doubt the link you put; good stuff; thanks.
Scaulen, Thanks for the Lowry story, it’s very good and I sure don’t dispute any of it. I will say, however, that there were those in govt and military that desperately wanted this to be a hero story, you probably aren’t going to find their fingerprints on it, but they had to divert the issue away from a looming debate on women in combat that was hanging in the air after Desert Storm. This one event came very, very close to forcing that debate to happen in congress. The problem is, the military and most knowledgable people in govt realize that we really cannot afford to have that debate, because IF it happened that a decision is made that women should not be subjected to combat, and I’m not saying it would, the Army would have a real problem. Since women are not allowed to man most types of combat units, they are mostly restricted to support units. Then they are sent to the front lines in a ‘support’ mission vice a combat mission, essentially sidestepping the policy of no women in ground combat. (Side note: support missions look pretty much the same as combat missions when bullets are flying.) Since females are mainly in support units, some support units tend to have a high percentage of females in them. What would happen if someone told the army it had to replace all of those women in support units with men? Bottom line is, they couldn’t if they wanted to. Women have been intergrated into the military so much that the loss of them would be unacceptable because it would devastate the vital support arm of the Army. So now the Army is in the position of already being committed to depend on the women who fill the ranks. Nothing wrong with that, the women are stepping up. Also, after the baby boom ended, the pool of recruiting age men and women is getting much smaller. If we were to try to build our Army back up to a number where we really need them at, (Pre-Clinton levels), they would have a hard time recruiting that many young men. So, the Army cannot afford to go back now and have any kind of debate about the status of women in the armed forces, it would be awfully embarrassing and unpopular to have to admit that we really don’t have a choice about it…….unless we went back to a draft. How do you think that would go over?
Simple solution, let them serve in combat. It worked for the Russian Army, it’s working for the Israelis, the Celts used to let women fight, some of them were even more dangerous when their man went down. Let them fight as long as they can handle the combat load, and deal with the stress of serving in the infantry and not use womanly problems as an excuse to get out of anything.
I like the whole Scaulen let them fight like the Celts!
Didn’t Celtic women go into battle bare-breasted, and painted blue, or something like that….??? I”m all for that….Queen Boudicca and all that……..
Am I too old to go back in…..????
Now you got me wantin to re-up!
What would be a great PR move would be to have an all woman infantry unit. Let them roll up some insurgents, and see how AQ and the other islamofacists spin that defeat.
Yeah I’d go back in also, it’d be great to see some young pup fresh from boot having to do push ups issued from his female squad leader. 🙂