stogoe said,

May 22, 2008 at 8:15 am

Wasn’t Tillman fragged by his own squad for not being Christian?

Or is that just me cobbling together coherence from half-truths, misinformation and uncomfortable silences?

He was killed by friendly fire, but the exact circumstances of what and why still aren’t clear (when are they ever when the military is involved)? Tillman was pretty open about being an unbeliever, so some people have speculated that maybe that was part of it. Contributing to the speculation was the fact that his atheism turned out to be one of the reasons that the investigation of his death was so half-assed:

In a transcript of his interview with Brig. Gen. Gary Jones during a November 2004 investigation, Kauzlarich said he’d learned Kevin Tillman, Pat’s brother and fellow Army Ranger who was a part of the battle the night Pat Tillman died, objected to the presence of a chaplain and the saying of prayers during a repatriation ceremony in Germany before his brother’s body was returned to the United States.

Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives.

In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: “When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.”

Asked by ESPN.com whether the Tillmans’ religious beliefs are a factor in the ongoing investigation, Kauzlarich said, “I think so. There is not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system [by the Tillmans]. So that is my personal opinion, knowing what I know.”

Asked what might finally placate the family, Kauzlarich said, “You know what? I don’t think anything will make them happy, quite honestly. I don’t know. Maybe they want to see somebody’s head on a platter. But will that really make them happy? No, because they can’t bring their son back.”

Kauzlarich, now 40, was the Ranger regiment executive officer in Afghanistan, who played a role in writing the recommendation for Tillman’s posthumous Silver Star. And finally, with his fingerprints already all over many of the hot-button issues, including the question of who ordered the platoon to be split as it dragged a disabled Humvee through the mountains, Kauzlarich conducted the first official Army investigation into Tillman’s death.

That investigation is among the inquiries that didn’t satisfy the Tillman family.

“Well, this guy makes disparaging remarks about the fact that we’re not Christians, and the reason that we can’t put Pat to rest is because we’re not Christians,” Mary Tillman, Pat’s mother, said in an interview with ESPN.com. Mary Tillman casts the family as spiritual, though she said it does not believe in many of the fundamental aspects of organized religion.

“Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that this whole thing is shady,” she said sarcastically, “But it is because we are not Christians.”

After a pause, her voice full with emotion, she added, “Pat may not have been what you call a Christian. He was about the best person I ever knew. I mean, he was just a good guy. He didn’t lie. He was very honest. He was very generous. He was very humble. I mean, he had an ego, but it was a healthy ego. It is like, everything those [people] are, he wasn’t.”

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=tillmanpart1

So that just fueled the speculation.

So Tillman’s beliefs were definitely at issue in the investigation after his death. But whether they played any role in his death itself is still just speculation, though. I’ve at least never heard anyone provide any solid evidence that Tillman was killed because he wasn’t Christian. I wouldn’t put it past the military to do something like that, but I can’t believe it without some solid evidence.

Or is that just me cobbling together coherence from half-truths, misinformation and uncomfortable silences?

And this reminds me of the continuing disgraceful cover-up by the Bush administration of how he died.

Way to honor Mr. Tillman’s memory.

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

and

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

It may be subtle, but he subtly butchered the meaning of the song.