This is true, but some choices one makes in life leads to their death. Those choices can make one live on after their death.

And now to be a little macabre. In Canada we have a hero named Terry Fox. He had lost most of one leg to cancer and to raise awareness he decided to run across Canada. At the time, such things were very unheard of. He didn't make it. Approximately half-way across Canada, in Thunder Bay, Ontario he had to stop as Cancer had spread to his lungs. He died just prior to turning 23. His name is honoured everywhere. It adorns schools, streets, even a ship. There are commemorative coins that have also been released in his honour. Perhaps I'm being cynical, but I'm not sure he would have been so honoured had he completed his marathon and lived. The choices one makes in life which are in some small part tied with their premature death, gives that person a life that will exceed any normal lifespan. Each year in September, thousands run to raise money for cancer research. Thousands who would not have, money that would not have been raised if not for his "sacrifice."

How one lives can dictate their fame or recognition. But the circumstances of their death and how that tied in with choices they made in life can also greatly contribute. I can serve - if nothing else - as mere inspiration for others who may go on to do even greater things. Butterfly in the rain forest effect.

The most detailed account I read about the incident was in the SI article about it. I would not disagree with negligent homicide - the guy on the 50 was scared to death and would not stop shooting - but, you think it may have been intentional?

Didn't mean anything? Are they kidding me?! I'm sorry, I gatta throw the BS FLAG!

If more people were to Live It Like Pat <-- CLICK this world would be a much better place. Nuff said.

I recall an article from not long ago saying that the army doctors who did the autopsy had suggested he was killed intentionally because of the spacing of the shots that killed him, but that was kept quiet in the lies/coverup surrounding his death. IIRC his family has also mentioned suspecting that it was intentional. I'm not sure what the motive or whatever was supposed to be though. Will try to find the article again.

Edit-
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003617692

tell it as it is, he went out there saw the curruption and illegal nature of it all, started writing a heap of contentious anti war letters to his brother I believe, made it well aware the moment he got back to us soil he was going to do every thing in his power against the "war".

He got shot so many times I heard it was almost impossible to id him and that was after he hid behind some cover shouting, "you idiots dont shoot me im pat tillman".



some one post his letters home..

I did not hear about these findings that he was hit from anywhere between 10-35 feet. I thought the engagement range was so far that the group with the Humvee mounted M2 could not see that US troops were being fired on.

Very disturbing. This one hurts.

Piggy back that on the story this am that 8 US troops were killed at a base that the US was planning on abandoning and... I think I will hide away from anymore news or current events for the rest of the weekend... too sad.

So, I just finished the book. It really could have been titled "Bush's GWOT is a friendly fire frag fest". It covered, in great detail, many of the friendly fore incidents from Iraq and Afghanistan. More horrific then Tillman's case is the case of the A-10s that shot up Marine AMTRACS in Nasiriya... good lord that was awful. One guy there survived an A-10 attack in GW1 only to be subjected to it AGAIN!

And, in a cruel bit of irony, it was actually an Army officer that said Pat's death was meaningless, not the author...

"You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing and now he is no more"

- Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich


And, after reading the story, no, I do not believe Pat was murdered.

The question as to whether NFL-hero Pat Tillman was deliberately murdered has raised its ugly head once more, as it is revealed that he had turned against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An NFL hero who was highly regarded by so many Americans simply could not be allowed to go back home to publicize his beliefs. After all, President Bush had much to fear from a soldier who had fought on the ground in a war which did not need to fought. Tillman was a huge political liability. Let us now review this current information.

NEWS BRIEF: "US war hero Pat Tillman thought Iraq war was 'imperial folly' - former American football player Pat Tillman who was killed in Afghanistan thought George W. Bush was a 'cowboy' ", Telegraph.co.uk, 16 September 2009

"The soldier and former American football player Pat Tillman who was killed in Afghanistan thought George W. Bush was a 'cowboy' and the Iraq an 'imperial folly'. According to a new book, Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in 2004 and hailed as an all-American hero by the former president, was disillusioned by Mr Bush and his administration's 'illegal and unjust' drive to war. "

Let us stop right here. If NFL hero Pat Tillman truly had come to the conclusion that the war in Afghanistan and Iraq were "illegal and unjust", he would be able to stand on a national stage and voice his opinion once he returned home. Since many Americans idolize their war heroes, Tillman's opinion would have carried a lot of weight, and could have cost President Bush the support he needed to continue to build-up his Afghanistan and Iraqi Wars!

The consequences of Pat Tillman turning against the government was compounded by the fact that the government had really built Tillman up when he first enrolled in the Army. The Bush Administration had held up Tillman as the kind of guy all Americans should endeavor to become; immediately after the attacks of 9/11, he had quit a starting position with the National Football League Cardinals, paying him many millions of dollars, just so he could join the Army to help his nation in such a time of need.

But, when Pat Tillman turned against the government's war policies and was planning to take center stage back home after getting out to publicize that opposition, the government had to act. The result was an "accidental friendly fire" episode which took Tillman's life. He would pose no more problem to the President and his war policies.

" 'In Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman', by Jon Krakauer, the author relates the strong views of Tillman - who gave up his NFL football career to serve his country - and his brother Kevin, who joined the same Rangers unit ... The brothers lamented how easy it had been for Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to bully secretary of state Colin Powell, both the houses of Congress, and the majority of the American people into endorsing the invasion of Iraq."

Pat Tillman will always be a real hero -- killed because he was about to reveal the truth of a planned and worthless Illuminati war, a "War On Terror".

Krakauer obviously thinks that nothing is worth dying for. It's unlikely that he has found anything worth living for either. The two kinda go hand in hand.

I got about halfway through this book and finally couldn't stand the author's anti-Bush bile any longer. He goes on for pages about the disputed 2000 election to throw doubt on the legitimacy of Bush's whole Administration without once mentioning that the Florida Ballot Project concluded that, even if the USSCT had not stopped the recount, Bush would still have won (see http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html). And the Nasiriyah friendly fire story was both heartrending and infuriating, but, other than being another blue on blue incident, it had nothing to do with Pat Tillman.

I did, however, come away with an even greater respect for this extraordinary man. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Arizona State, an rare achievement for someone at a Div I school on a football scholarship. He also turned down a multimillion dollar multi-year offer from the St. Louis Rams to re-sign with the Arizona Cardinals (a notoriously stingy organization) for a one year at league minimum pay because the Cardinals, by picking him in the last round of the NFL draft, had showed they believed in him when no other team had. His journal entries quoted in the book reveal are incredibly articulate and insightful, and are some of the best writing of this sort I've ever encountered.

I have read several of Mr. Krakauer's books, and I have seldom seen a worse mismatch between author and subject. Krakauer is an adrenaline junky turned journalist who seems to specialize in writing about tragic deaths which truly could be considered pointless, from hapless tourist climbers freezing on Everest because they were accidentally caught in a storm to a hapless vagabond starving in Alaska because he accidentally marooned himself on the wrong side of a river. Perhaps inevitably, he views this story through the same prism. Pat Tillman, however, was very far from hapless, and the story of his life and death, while achingly tragic, has profound meaning at a level that I believe someone like Mr. Krakauer simply cannot comprehend.