Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
April 29
Patrick Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
| April
29, 2004
A Pawn in Their Game
The
Utterly Un-Lonesome Death of Pat Tillman
By DAVE ZIRIN
When
Pat Tillman walked away from the NFL to join the Army Rangers, rivulets
of saliva flowed from the White House to the Defense Department. Here
was the Arizona Cardinals' record setting safety turning his back on
a $3.5 million contract to "fight the war on terror." Immediately
Madison Avenue PR firms, hired by the Defense Department with our tax
dollars, began churning out releases exalting "The American Athlete
At War" replete with stories of Ted Williams's flying missions
over the Pacific. The confederate confines of talk radio spoke of Tillman
as "The "Real American Hero making "The Ultimate Sacrifice."
One wonders if James Earl Jones had already been contracted to bleat,
"Pat Tillman: An Army of One."
There
was just one problem. Tillman wouldn't play their game. He turned down
"hundreds if not thousands" of interviews and photo ops. He
refused to be in any recruitment videos or on a single poster. Soon
the story of "NFL player Pat Tillman in the Army Rangers"
faded into the next news cycle. A year went by without a mention. No
one tracked the day when his shoulder length hair was shaved to the
scalp. No one snapped shots of his time in the "Army Ranger Indoctrination
Program". No one knew about his first tour in Iraq. But last Friday
in Afghanistan when Tillman was killed, the gears of the machine started
to turn.
As
Tillman’s family and football fans grieved, the Bush War Machine
and their cronies sprang into action. In death, a compliant Tillman
could prove far more useful to the Masters of War than in life.
In
"Dead Tillman", the Washington Establishment finally gets
a dead soldier they can cozy up to.
"Where
do we get such men as these? Where to we find these people willing to
stand up for America?" asked Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth, as
he dived in front of the nearest camera. "He chose action rather
than words. He was a remarkable person. He lived the American dream,
and he fought to preserve the American dream and our way of life."
Sen.
George Allen of Virginia, the son of the late Hall of Fame coach sent
a letter to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue asking the league to dedicate
the season to Tillman and other U.S. soldiers ``serving in the war on
terrorism.''
And
of course Former Texas Rangers Owner George W. Bush jumped into the
fray commenting that "Pat Tillman was an inspiration both on and
off the football field".
At
a time when the US's "coalition of the willing" is ditching
Bush like he has plague and the Iraqi resistance mushrooms, "Dead
Tillman" has been treated at 1600 Pennsylvania like Christmas in
April. The former 7th round draft pick will be their symbol, as the
White House commented, of "all we are fighting for."
Yet
Pat Tillman is in no way the typical face of the dead U.S. soldier.
In fact, like so much of Bush's global conquest, this is a bloody lie.
The face of the dead U.S. soldier is not a 27 year old man walking away
from millions of dollars to make "the ultimate sacrifice"
The dead soldier is far more likely to be in Iraq or Afghanistan beyond
their tour of duty. The dead soldier, chances are, was suffering from
depression and crushingly low morale in the days before their death.
The dead soldier was making $18,000 dollar a year and possibly living
on food stamps. There is a 35% chance the dead soldier is black or Latino.
While one NFL millionaire served in "Operation Enduring Occupation"
there are 37,000 non-citizens occupying Iraq alone to benefit from a
new program that allows immigrants to apply for citizenship immediately
and not wait the usual 5 years. Maybe the dead soldier was recruited
in the US Army's new number one recruitment spot: Tijuana, Mexico.
The
true face of the dead US soldier, and the growing anger of their families,
is why Commander in Chief Bush has boycotted all of their funerals.
It is why photos of flag-draped coffins had to be smuggled out. It is
why the workers who took those photos have been fired.
With
Tillman, Bush is hoping to do what his train wreck of a press conference
failed to do: shore up support for his Middle Eastern slaughter. But
not everyone is taking the bait. In fact by "humanizing" the
death of a popular ex-football player Bush could be running right into
some hardcore necessary roughness.
Sports
fans and scribes aren't the mindless patriots that the White House,
and much of the left, believes. The public parade of “Dead Tillman”
can breed a variety of reactions. Nationally renowned - and ceaselessly
apolitical - sports columnist Mike Lupica wrote, "Pat Tillman got
to live out his professional dreams for a little while. What about all
the ones dying over there who didn't?" The ESPN show the Sports
Reporters show commented, "The White House has no right to say
anything about the death of Tillman since it doesn't want to show pictures
of the dead. They can't have it both ways."
In
fact, on what is possibly the most frat boy drenched Sports Radio show,
"The Jungle With Jim Rome" one caller identified himself as
an ex-soldier from Arizona and said, "The President needs to take
a long look in the mirror and try to figure out if this is worth it."
He then paused and said, "War to no one. Fight for peace."
Pat
Tillman played football with a relentless intensity. Wait for the look
on Bush's face when the folks who cheered for Pat, fight with that same
intensity against the war that took his life.
Dave
Zirin is the News Editor of the Prince George’s Post
in Prince George’s County, Maryland. His sports writing can be
read at www.edgeofsports.com.
He can be reached at editor@pgpost.com.
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