Was Pat Tillman Fragged?

Was Pat Tillman, the former football player who left the NFL after 9/11 to join the Army and serve in Afghanistan, a real-life version of Doug Neidermeyer from "National Lampoon's Animal House"?

When Tillman was killed in April of 2004, the Army put it out that he was killed by enemy fire and awarded him a Silver Star posthumously for bravery under fire. America badly needed a hero at that moment and Tillman fit the bill -- a high-earning football star who put his lucrative NFL career aside to serve his country and who died bravely in the service of that country. His memorial service was televised live, as if to point up the fact that America still had heroes.

Now, in a way that is symbolic of this entire war, the story of Pat Tillman's death put out by the military turns out to have been a lie. Worse than that -- it was a deliberate lie. An official report has said, according to the L.A. Times, that "Army officers told soldiers to remain quiet about the circumstances of Tillman's death for fear of negative news coverage."

Tillman's death is now the subject of a criminal inquiry. Apparently the Army is now considering the possibility that Tillman was not just the victim of "friendly fire," as they put out once their first story fell apart, but the victim of, at the very least, a negligent homicide.

But when you think about it, why should we believe that story either? Again according to the L.A. Times story, the Army has admitted "that soldiers destroyed evidence — Tillman's uniform and flak vest — after the shooting," in a way that sounds like a deliberate cover-up of criminal activity.

Was Tillman, like the fictional Doug Neidermeyer in Vietnam, deliberately killed -- fragged -- by his own troops? The facts are not in yet (and given how the Army has botched this story I'm not sure their "facts" are ever going to be believable anyway), but the circumstantial evidence is looking as if that might be a very real possibility.

Tom Moran