Oh, CRAP! Ex-Football Star Pat Tillman KIA in Afghanistan - Official

[Dis]

I better edit this post

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I better edit this post as well

[Dis]

Originally posted by Whaleboy






People will generally die for what they love. I don't love my nation or my religion because those are artificial constructs and I'm not about to let myself get wasted for the ideas of other men. I'd die to defend myself or those I love however, but that does not entail international conflict, so no dice. Your little tirade, the attempt to call me a freeloaded is just BS.



I agree there is nothing separating him from any others, and loss of human life is always a tragedy, especially when these men are so young. Nonetheless, I'm not about to get all happy clappy about their decision to fight. Nonetheless, they are human first, flag ****ers second.

you just don't get it do you? Even if you don't believe in nations, other countries do. And they will organize and will conquer you. What are you going to do when an army of 2 million threatens you or your family?

[Gatekeeper]

I take it you don't respect reservists much, do you, Sloww? Any particular reason why, because you're doing a helluva job throwing mud at them.

And didn't Bush serve in the Air National Guard to avoid going directly to Vietnam? If so, why do you respect him so much? Shouldn't your standards for reservists be the same?

Gatekeeper

[Zero]

werd.

giving up 3.6 million to serve shows he made sacrifice.

his death however isnt related to the decision he made. they all die the same. It is sad to hear though. it does make you think that he shouldnt have to pay another sacrifice after doing that much for the country...

[Drake Tungsten]

Sloww never said that he didn't respect reservists. He's just saying that Tillman's sacrifice of a dream life to serve his country makes him respect Tillman more than some soldiers who got into the service for less noble reasons. A perfectly legitimate point of view, even if I don't entirely agree with it. Certainly not a viewpoint deserving of all the bile and hatred being thrown Slowwhand's way right now...

[mactbone]

I haven't read anything, but here's the deal. ESPN is being the good little news service it is and pumping up the Tillman angle ever since he entered the armed services. It's bad that he died but I hate that he's always been "special." There's no reason at all that we should value athletes that enter the armed services more than an average joe but apparently anybody that could make money or entertain us is more important. That's just wrong.

I mourn this loss and all other US soldiers who have died - the same.

[Dis]

I also don't like the fact the Rangers got ambushed. They are Rangers, they are supposed to be the best. I'm disappointed they let themselves get ambushed. We need to be better than this.

[The Mad Monk]

It's hot in here, you know?

[The Mad Monk]

RANGER CREED

Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of the Rangers.

Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster, and fight harder than any other soldier.

Never shall I fail my comrades I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one hundred percent and then some.

Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress, and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.

Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.

Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

[The Mad Monk]

22:10 MST 4/23/04

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement,
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

-- Abraham Lincoln, November 1864







Tackling terrorism
Many touched by Tillman's sacrifice

Tim Tyers
The Arizona Republic
Sep. 11, 2002

Former Cardinals safety Pat Tillman turned his back on a three-year, $3.6 million contract and enlisted in the U.S. Army with designs on becoming a Ranger.

He was newly married, with a chance for lifetime financial security. But those close to him say he had wanted to make a difference since the terrorist attacks last Sept. 11.

He hasn't been heard from in the media since making his decision in May.

Tillman, who became a Cardinal after a celebrated career at Arizona State, has refused all requests to talk about his decision to trade training camp for basic training, which started in July. But it hasn't stopped others from saluting his effort.

"God love him. America is lucky to have guys like him," Diamondbacks first baseman Mark Grace said. "It's beyond impressive."


Randy Reid/The Arizona Republic

Pat Tillman gave up a $3.6 million contract with the Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army.

Tillman has sworn family and friends to codes of silence. They say little, largely because Tillman has told them he wants to achieve his Ranger goal before talking. The Army is shielding him from the media, despite numerous national requests.

Often forgotten is that Tillman's younger brother, Kevin, who played baseball at ASU and was in the Cleveland Indians organization, enlisted with him. When people approach their father, attorney Pat Tillman Sr., and praise the sacrifice his celebrated son has made, he holds up two fingers.

"He and his brother are doing well and have risen to every challenge presented to them," said Elsi Jackson, a civilian public affairs officer at Fort Benning, Ga.

Jackson said the Tillmans will complete advanced individual training at the end of October, then go to a three-week parachute training course, followed by a three-week Ranger regimen course. They'll be assigned to a unit in January for nine to 12 months before returning to Ranger school.

"I've talked to his wife (Marie), and I got a letter from Pat," Cardinals defensive coordinator Larry Marmie said. "He's doing well. Everything was positive. He just talked about the work they've been through. He wished us the best and wanted to tell everybody hello."

The question posed by many in our cash-crazed society is: Why would somebody with the world at his fingers make such a sacrifice? In a recent article, the New York Times suggested that Tillman lost friends in the twin towers disaster and that spurred his decision.

Family members have said this is not the case.

"He told me it was a lot of things," Marmie said. "It was something he had thought about for a long time. He felt he had lived a very comfortable life and in some way - now this isn't word for word - he needed, not wanted, to pay someone back. He felt that he was in debt to somebody for the kind of life he had up to this point.

"He is a very, very intelligent guy who is all about challenges. I don't think he was a highly recruited guy to Arizona State, but he came to ASU because somebody saw something in him. But he came and proved himself there, and he certainly had to prove himself at this level and at another position.

"A couple of summers ago, he came to me and said he was going to run a marathon and did, and the next summer he said he was going to do a triathlon and did."

Others close to the Tillman brothers said neither of them "wants stuff happening in their back yard," a reference to the terrorist attacks.

"Pat is a live-for-the-day type of guy. He wants to make the best of his days, so I wasn't surprised," Cardinals safety Kwamie Lassiter said. "It's the type of guy he is: 'What else can I do to help somebody?' I have respect for him. He worked hard. He was seventh-rounder and made the best of his opportunity. He worked hard and established himself as a strong player. He's a stand-up guy."

Tillman's decision to forgo the security that a pro contract would have provided hasn't gone unnoticed among other athletes in Phoenix.

"I don't know him, but I've seen him play and I'm a huge fan of his," said Coyotes wing Shane Doan, a Canadian. "Everybody wants something that they can believe in passionately, and everybody believes passionately in their country. At the same time, he gave up a whole lot to do that. It's just a neat thing. You just wish him all the best."

Diamondbacks outfielder Luis Gonzalez said Tillman's decision has touched the entire community.

"He left a lot of money out there to achieve something in his heart that he wanted to do," he said. "You can't fault the man for that. Everybody loved watching him play, from his intensity to the way he approached the game. He has taken the high road on interviews and things like that. He's doing what he wants and not for recognition.

"The recognition steamrolled because he did something nobody believed anybody would ever do, leave a pro sport to join the military."

Grace said: "From what I've heard about Pat, he will be a Ranger, and he's going to defend our country. Nothing but kudos for him. I've met him, but I really don't know him. But I'd like to get to know him better."

By Greg Garber
ESPN.com


While Pat Tillman's former Arizona Cardinals teammates sweat and grimace their way through an off-season conditioning program -- a heavy rotation of weight lifting and aerobic exercises -- Tillman faces the prospect of the ultimate sacrifice.

A member of the elite Army Rangers, Tillman presumably is on the ground somewhere in the splintered country of Iraq. Deployed in early March along with the rest of the 75th Ranger Regiment, he and his comrades are working to liberate Iraq from the grip of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Tillman, at 26 years old, left a three-year, $3.6 million contract on the table to enlist in the Army with his brother Kevin after the 2001 season. Tillman will make no more than $17,000 this year. He is believed to be the first NFL regular to leave the game for military service since World War II, when 1,000 players served and 23 were killed.

Tillman's commitment has inspired shock and, quite frankly, awe.

"It touches you pretty deep," Cardinals head coach Dave McGinnis said at the recent NFL meetings. "Pat Tillman is a guy that is full of fiber, full of fabric, everything that he does goes right to the core of what is good and sound in our country."

John McCain, the U.S. Senator from Arizona who was a prisoner of war for more than five years in Vietnam, lauded Tillman as "the quintessential definition of a patriot."

The Rangers are the Army's finest light infantry unit, whose standard weaponry are machine guns, mortars and grenade launchers. It was the Rangers who conducted a daylight raid in Somalia, an event upon which Ridley Scott based his 2001 film, "Black Hawk Down."

"They strike quickly, with great precision and lethality," said Carol Darby, the news media chief for the Army Special Operations command at North Carolina's Fort Bragg. "They break things open so other people can come in behind them."

After Tillman made his ground-breaking decision to serve his country in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some wondered if others in the athletic arena -- in many minds, a parallel universe to the crucible of war -- would come in behind him.

And while there has been an outpouring of support for the U.S. troops from athletes in all sports, no other high-profile professional athlete has followed Tillman's selfless example. In fact, former Cardinals teammate Simeon Rice, now a member of the Super Bowl champion-Tampa Bay Buccaneers, disparaged Tillman in an interview on Jim Rome's radio show last month.


Pat Tillman has been alone among today's professional athletes at the highest level, giving up his career to serve his country.
"He really wasn't that good, not really," Rice said. "He was good enough to play in Arizona, [but] that's just like the XFL."

After several more promptings from Rome, Rice allowed, "I think it's very admirable, actually. You've got to give kudos to a guy like that because he did it for his own reasons. Maybe it's the Rambo movies, maybe it's Sylvester Stallone, Rocky, whatever compels him."

More likely, it was Tillman's love for America, not to mention his brother, who also enlisted. In the aftermath of the interview, Rice's remarks were seen as symptomatic of today's privileged, self-centered professional athletes who have been enabled from their earliest playing days.

"A professional athlete's career is self-indulgent almost by definition," said Alan Klein, professor of sociology and anthropology at Northeastern University. "Risking your career and your life is not an easy decision. They're content to wear a patch on the uniform for solidarity, but that's the easy way out. Really, we're all taking the easy way out.

"My parents were in [Nazi concentration camp] Auschwitz. All my life, I've heard about the acts of bravery and sacrifice. We would all like to think of ourselves as people who would do the right thing. But, deep down, how many of us would give up everything we have? Certainly, it's not a lock."

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Tillman is army of one

Saturday, September 14th, 2002

Pat Tillman would be appalled. Let the man hallucinate in peace, please. Let him starve until his internal organs begin to screech in pain.


Just because he would rather sleep standing up, with ants crawling in and out of nostrils, doesn't make him insane. So what if he traded in a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals for an existence in which his bosses make NFL coaches seem like Mahatma Gandhi and the paychecks total $18,000 a year. Must we continue to write and speak about a professional athlete who no longer matters on Sunday afternoons?

Well, yes, we must.

There might not be a more important story in sports today, tomorrow, next year, forever - whenever the elusive concept of peace is achieved - than the story of Pat Tillman. He's the Arizona Cardinal strong safety who, days after returning from his honeymoon, voluntarily tossed away what had already been a meaningful NFL career for a chance to defend what is most sacred. He's the Ted Williams of our time.

He's the only professional athlete who truly deserves to be hailed a hero.

Imagine, Tillman, 25 and in his peak earning years, did not even consult his agent on this one. What was he going to hold out for, more rations? While rescue workers were still exhuming body parts at Ground Zero last autumn, Tillman and his brother Kevin, a minor league baseball player, simply up and joined the Army with the intention of becoming Rangers, that elite Special Forces unit, the alpha males of the military. Not every athlete needs props on the highlight shows: the Tillmans, bless them, have denied all interview requests.

There was a report the brothers lost friends in the Sept. 11 attack, but family members say that is not true. Still looking for a reason? There were 2,801 of them in New York alone. One year ago many Americans had the same initial gut reaction as the Tillmans', but then the selfish and practical realities of our lives took over.

Pat and Kevin added an extra layer of meaning to the mantra hanging in the air from the doomed passengers of Flight 93: Let's roll.

The Tillmans, both of whom enlisted with the grunt ranking of specialists rather than accept the Army's offer to let them enter as officers, won't complete advanced individual training in Fort Benning, Ga., until next month. Then begins the real torture. Ranger School has been described by one graduate as "about as close to terminal misery as the Army gets."

My brother Craig remembers watching a fellow soldier, delirious and delusional and craving a soda, attempt to put change in a cactus during the now extinct desert phase in Texas. His West Point classmates have equally harrowing tales of what a person can achieve when pushed to an extreme, and it is no coincidence that a sports background was their greatest buffer.

John Beatty was a wild-man linebacker at West Point, class of '92. Pete Carey was the pretty-boy quarterback. Both eventually earned the coveted black and gold Ranger Tab, though not without some perilous moments. Only 35% of candidates graduate Ranger School, and the actual failure rate is much higher considering the three-day preliminary camp weeds out another 30-40%.

"They deprive you of sleep and they deprive you basically of food and your body gets torn down. I'm sure I talked to a couple of trees in the middle of night because I thought they were people," says Carey, who later commanded a light infantry air assault company in Korea and is now a graduate student at USC. "Football prioritizes qualities like speed and explosive power. Ranger School demands stamina and endurance in ways that football can never match."

Three phases - swamps in Florida, mountains and jungle in Georgia - make up the Ranger course over 61 days, with each training day lasting 19.6 hours. Beds, for the lucky ones, might be a tuft of pine needles, or a latrine ditch. Many soldiers snooze on their feet, after "humping" (walking with a 115-pound backpack filled with water, provisions, ammo, weapons and clothing so that they resemble camels) across miles of treacherous territory through the night.

Always, soldiers must be ready for the next operation, the next ambush. Rangers train like they fight. Bones crack and break in the pitch-black night movement; plenty of soldiers drop out after suffering trench foot and other skin diseases from spending days on end in the water. In 1995, four Rangers died of hypothermia after grueling training in the chilly, chest-high north Florida swamps, where they were engaged in a bridge-building exercise.

"Survival takes mental toughness and guts, to use words I learned from football," says Beatty, now a U.S. Army captain assigned to HQ's 5th Army in Ft. Leavenworth, Kan. "Those two-a-days and playing through pain were great preparation. It all falls under the umbrella of teamwork. If you can work as a member of a bigger goal, whether in football or the military, you have a much greater chance of surviving."

Carey remembers candy bars - John Wayne bars, they're called - being bartered for $50. Like Tillman, who is listed in the Cardinals media guide as 5-11, 200 pounds, Carey had little fat to burn: within two weeks, he went from 195 pounds to 160. At least when the body begins to smell like ammonia, feeding on itself, the bugs keep their distance. "I saw some guys who were real studs who didn't make it," says Carey. "That 12-mile road march is a heck of a lot different than doing passing drills."

Pat Tillman is, by all accounts, a real stud who tends to laugh in the abyss of can't dos. He wasn't selected until the seventh round of the 1998 NFL draft, the 226th pick overall, too small to remain a linebacker, too slow (it was assumed) to have much of a chance. He converted to safety, set a Cardinals record with 224 tackles in 2000, and when St. Louis came courting with an offer of $9 million, he chose loyalty over bucks. Bless him again, he wanted to stick with one of the NFL's most woebegone teams.

And stamina? Tillman, restless following the '99 season, ran a marathon. He prepared for the 2001 training camp by competing in a 70.2-mile triathlon. Mental toughness? Tillman used to climb atop 200-foot light towers at Sun Devil Stadium, a perfectly logical place for a guy to meditate.

The Rangers, perhaps the most storied military unit in the world, seem a sober fit. They are America's finest assassins, warriors in a testosterone fog, first in and last out, securing airfields, taking prisoners, bombing railways and bridges and doing the nasty work that makes it possible for the rest of us to enjoy our daily freedoms.

So this afternoon, as you sip a cold one and watch your heroes in shoulder pads do battle on the gridiron, think of Tillman. Tell his story, again and again and again. It bears repeating.






"As a company commander in combat...crawling around in the mud with an enemy machine gun hammering over my head...the crotch ripped out of my uniform..constipated...hungry...huge bug bites under my eyes...exhausted with days of intermittent sleep....I could always comfort myself by saying..."it could be worse....I could be back in Ranger School". General Barry McCaffrey

http://www.ranger25.com/Pat%20Tillman.htm

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Why exactly does this one rate any more (or less) attention than any other KIA?

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=113624

Thank you MtG..I was reading and pondering the same thoughts...then started to read this thread..

As a former member of the U S Armed Forces, I am as Red,White & Blue as the next but also have compassion for Mr.Tillman...as one of many whom have paid the price..

Truly sad is all for any whom have paid up instead of shutting up..


Peace

GT

[Tuberski]

There is a lot of vitriol being thrown around in a thread about a guy that was doing what he felt was right and died because of it.

Does his sacrifice mean more than the other 700 that have died?

No.

Had anybody heard of Tillman before he joined the Army?

Yes.

It's that simple really. Yet, everybody wants to make it out to be more than it is.

No, his death isn't any different but his notoriety was.

ACK!

[Drake Tungsten]

Pretty good summation of the issue at hand, Tuber...

[Sava]

This is a bigger media circus than Jessica Lynch.