Just Add It Onto The Lie Pile

I'm watching this Pat Tillman/Jessica Lynch hearing and it's disgusting. The Gavel has some clips from Tillman's brother, Lynch, and Henry Waxman.

The military used both of these deaths as public relations opportunities, in Tillman's case hiding the evidence that the incident was friendly fire, and in Lynch's case holding up her rescue a day until video services could be arranged so they could tape the whole thing.

There was no need to lie about fratricide; nobody would have thought any less of Tillman. But the military wanted a clean hero story they could sell to the public and keep them on the side of war, so they lied, including to Tillman's own family (his brother was powerful today). A specialist and eyewitness to the fratricide is testifying right now that he was essentially threatened that there would be consequences if he ever told the family that it was a friendly fire death.

Hiding the evidence is the modus operandi of a military at war.

UPDATE: It's important to mention just what Kevin Tillman asserted:

Pat Tillman's brother accused the military Tuesday of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in initially portraying the football star's death in Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.

"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," Kevin Tillman told a hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee that was also looking at how the military portrayed the rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

"Revealing that Pat's death was a (friendly fire) fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed," said Tillman, who was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened three years ago but didn't see it.

Subpoena Power

Democrats in the House and Senate have requested additional documents about the US Attorney activities. Did I say requested? I mean demanded. Not only do they want redacted and withheld documents related to the purge, but they want to hear more about the strange case in Wisconsin, where an aide to Gov. Jim Doyle was jailed by the US Attorney in the region right before the 2006 Election, and subsequently hastily dismissed on the basis of "very thin" evidence. Here's part of Leahy and Schumer's letter:

We are concerned whether or not politics may have played a role in a case brought by Stephen Biskupic, the United States attorney based in Milwaukee, against Georgia Thompson, formerly an official in the administration of Wisconsin's Democratic governor. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was reportedly so troubled by the insufficiency of the evidence against Ms. Thompson that it made the unusual decision to issue an order reversing Ms. Thompson's conviction and releasing her from custody immediately after oral arguments in her appeal.

They also go into the fact that Wisconsin voter fraud cases suddenly shot up right after the counselor to the President claimed that Bush himself complained about a lack of voter fraud cases in the state. The whole myth of voter fraud is well-documented; it's a phantom that allows Republicans to push political cases (by the way, the wheels of this are greased by those fatalists on the Left who believe that every election is doomed because Karl Rove can flip a switch and change the voting outcomes from a master command center. What suffers is electoral confidence, which allows Republicans to make these bullshit claims which have little or no evidentiary basis).

I find it interesting that the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are already looking into the Biskupic situation. It shows that they understand how the real scandal in this case may be the US Attorneys who have NOT been fired, rather than the ones who have (although they shouldn't be neglected either). Indeed, do you know who Alberto Gonzales picked just today to be his new chief of staff? The US Attorney for Connecticut.

It appears that the Justice Department is going to fight the release of these documents. I don't know who'll be doing the fighting, as Gonzales is deeply immersed in "Cover-Yer-Ass-Lie-Telling School" somewhere in a Washington gym, where he's hitting the heavy bag with a picture of Patrick Leahy taped up to the mirror. But you knew that, at some point, the White House would have to stonewall. Something out there is too incriminating. They've been skewering federal law enforcement for years. It's only catching up with them now because of an excess of "D's" on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, Henry Waxman's going to hold hearings on the disinformation campaigns by the miltary over Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch.

Isn't the majority just DIFFERENT?