Dead is dead

Here's a controversy I don't understand. I get the concept of "football hero goes off to war" and all the epic grandeur of that. But what I don't understand is the outrage surrounding his death.

Pat Tillman died from friendly fire. His own dudes killed him instead of the godless Muslims. It happens in every war. War is dangerous. The point of war is killing. So there's that.

But I don't understand why it's a scandal. Apparently, the Tillman's family didn't learn whose bullets killed Pat until five weeks after he died.

So what?

Dying from friendly fire doesn't make his death any less tragic or honorable than it would have been if some Iraqi with good aim had snuffed him.

I've thought a lot about this, because my stepson is on his third tour in Iraq. Now, I imagine if something bad happens to him, I'll hear about it third hand, because he doesn't talk to me and neither does his mother, my soon-to-be ex-wife. (I don't miss her. I do miss him. And I've never been quite sure why he doesn't talk to me, though I'm sure he has his reasons.) She didn't even tell me when she had the cat put down, so I don't imagine she'll call me if our soldier has a problem.

In any event, for those people in Iraq who get killed, dead is dead. It doesn't matter how they died, generally speaking. (I heard once about a guy who got killed by rolling a Humvee. That seems pretty idiotic and not at all honorable, but that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about.) I can't imagine giving a damn about who shot my kid. Dead is dead.

It's possible, however, that the Tillman family is upset about being lied to by the army and the administration (because W, opportunist that he is, used Pat in a speech about the war). Sure, I can see that. Being lied to sucks, especially by the people who run the show. But this is par for the course for this administration. Why does Alberto Gonzales have his tit in a wringer? For lying about his involvement in firing those U.S. Attorneys, not for actually doing it. What was Scooter Libby convicted of? Lying, not leaking.

The Pat Tillman controversy is strange, but it's an excellent indicator of W's presidency slowly collapsing presidency. That the Dems have finally figured it out is amazing, too, since they've been afraid of looking disloyal for years. I just hope people figure out that the web of lies coming out of Washington today is more serious than lying about a blowjob.