Festival of Lies

Is it wrong to think of our government as a cheap sham?

Ask the brave Americans who testified today in Congress.

Try Private Jessica Lynch, who got railroaded into fake marine hero-dom, in order to bolster support for the liars' war. She's so shockingly eloquent. The wounded soldier girl next door, patriot, truth-teller. Which these days feels like a rebel.

They staged everything, exploiting her pain and dignity.

Then check out Pat Tillman's family. They destroyed his uniform, for God's sake, to cover up the friendly fire tragedy with a b.s. story, straight to his family's face.

Brother Kevin: “Fraud–deliberate and calculated lies.” Calls out for Congress to investigate. Wildly compelling, justice.

And his poor mother. Institutionally lied to about her very own son for White House political advantage, and then told she isn't Christian enough to do so. Told her son is "worm dirt".

Smells like treason.

Eye into the army: Specialist Bryan O'Neal, U.S. Army. Another brave guy who will have a clear conscience tonight. Didn't make the changes in his reports, must have been done higher up. His climactic description of Pat's killing...this is what really happened, from the guy who could have been hit in Pat's place.

As one regular reader wrote to me this evening, incensed to obscenity over what this says about the officers in our military bureaucracy:

What the officer class acceded to w/ Tillman & Lynch is f*cking disgraceful. Besides the obvious examples, here are 3 more:

1) they delayed a rescue attempt on Lynch for over a day because they didn't have the right equipment to videotape it; they knew that their "rescue"would be a success since they knew she was being treated in an unguarded Iraqi hospital, not shackled and tortured in some fortified structure

2) they ordered Tillman's closest army pals to LIE to his brother -- ANOTHER US ARMY RANGER -- about the circumstances of his death

3) Everyone understands now that all of the docs regarding Tillman's death were fabricated, yet none of these "men of honor" will stand up and say "I did it," or "I ordered it."

Fuck them.

So how high up does this go? From The NY Times:

Democratic members of the committee devoted much time to an urgent memorandum sent by a top special operations commander, Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to other high-ranking commanders a week after Corporal Tillman’s death. General McChrystal is now a lieutenant general.

The memorandum said a preliminary investigation was likely to find that American fire caused the death. The message urged them to pass on the information to President Bush, the secretary of the army and others.

The Tillmans said they believed that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld must have known the truth early, a contention that Army investigators said they had failed to establish. “It’s a bit disingenuous to think that the administration did not know about what was going on, something so politically sensitive,” Kevin Tillman said. “So that’s, kind of, what we were hoping you guys could get involved with and take a look.”

Bush knew.

Which means he had to have approved of it.

Isn't that the story here?