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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060320/scheer0308Mary Tillman has been a model of patience and fortitude as she doggedly pursues the facts concerning her son Pat's death in Afghanistan two years ago. In that spirit, she welcomed as positive the news that the Pentagon's inspector general has asked the Army to launch an investigation into whether criminal negligence was involved in the "friendly fire" incident that resulted in the death of her football-star son who turned soldier.
That request by the inspector general, made after a review of three previous investigations, implies a clear rebuke of the military's handling of this case to date. But as much as Mary Tillman and the rest of the Tillman family hope this new inquiry will clear up the glaring contradictions and mysterious discrepancies of the previous accounts, she knows it is not prudent to be overly optimistic.
That's because, quite apart from what happened late that afternoon two years ago, there can now be little doubt that the Bush Administration quickly and cynically moved to spin the story in ways that would serve its political purposes at the expense of the truth.
"The Administration used Pat," Mary Tillman told me in a phone interview on Monday from San Jose. "They tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him."
Her words were chosen carefully, as befits a school teacher who spends many hours each week grading the logic and syntax of her students. But over the past two years, she has been fed so many lies by this Administration that she now confidently accuses it of something much more sinister than simple incompetence. . . . more
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