Remember His Name

Sports Illustrated has a cover story about Pat Tillman this week. I glanced through it at the Liberry and was surprised to note it sets the record straight about his true lefty politics and his real reasons for signing up:

Everybody who thought he'd enlisted purely out of patriotism, they missed reality by a half mile. Sure, he loved America and felt compelled to fight for it after more than 2,600 people at the World Trade Center were turned to dust. But his decision sprang from soil so much richer than that. The foisting of all the dirty work onto people less fortunate than an NFL safety clawed at his ethics. He had uncles and grandfathers on both sides who'd fought in World War II and the Korean War, one who'd taken a bullet in his chest, another who'd lost a finger and one who'd been the last to leap out of a plane shot from the sky. On a level deeper than almost any other American, he'd reaped the reward of those sacrifices: the chance his country afforded him to be himself, all of himself.

The sick, cynical, and twisted use of Pat Tillman by Rove and Rumsfeld for propaganda purposes is a national disgrace that has yet to be adequately addressed. Same goes for Jessica Lynch.