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OF PATRIOTS AND PAWNS: Carolyn Baker Reviews Mary Tillman's "Boots On The Ground By Dusk"

...............Mary Tillman was a school teacher at the time of Pat's death, and like most working Americans, she was very busy and had little time to research the dark side of the United States government. Nor was she inclined to do so with two sons enlisting in the Army shortly after 9/11. As is the case with many individuals who begin digging deeper, it wasn't until a tragedy erupted in her life that she embarked on her personal mission to examine the innumerable layers of the system in which she grew up and in which she previously took pride.

Boots On The Ground By Dusk is the saga of Mary's journey to the truth-an account of the glaring inconsistencies presented to the Tillman family about Pat's death in tandem with the endless changing of stories and cover-your-ass behavior exhibited by the Army. No intelligent human being could blithely accept such discrepancies, and Mary Tillman is nothing if not intelligent. She has refined the process of researching, questioning, fact-checking, and cross-referencing to an art form. She had to-for her own sanity and to honor her two soldier sons. All of the facts are there in her book, as they are in detail in "The Tillman Files." A litany of "why" questions occupies Pages 227-229 of the book and reveals Mary's thought process as she grapples with glaring government contradictions...............

.................Mary has come to believe that Pat's death was orchestrated as a public relations strategy to gain support for the Iraq War in 2004 around the time of the Fallujah carnage and as the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States. Shortly after Pat had enlisted, he received a letter from Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, thanking him for enlisting and leaving the NFL to serve his country. Moreover, Mary cites a memo from Rumsfeld, to then-Secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, "indicating that Pat was a very special young man. The language Rumsfeld used was that Pat was ‘world class' and that they should keep an eye on him." Mary states, "I'm not sure what that meant, but writing something like that, writing a letter to Pat, obviously he's going to be concerned when he's killed. He's going to want to know what happened." Thus Rumsfeld's denial of a coverup of Pat's death is, to say the least, extremely suspicious................

...............Boots On The Ground By Dusk and the investigative reporting of Stan Goff and Mike Ruppert are the only in-depth accounts we are likely to have for a very long time, if ever, regarding the murder of Pat Tillman which was one of myriad tragic facets of the U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both Mike and Stan in their individual writings have comprehensively documented the motivation behind these wars and the reality that both of them will be prolonged, pointless projects that will grind on for many years. Stan has written extensively about the use of asymmetric warfare by insurgents against traditional military giants like the United States, and Mike's exhaustive research regarding Peak Oil and 9/11 at From The Wilderness have illuminated the devious and demented political and economic system that has killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of human beings in the Middle East since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Unflinchingly, Mary, Mike, and Stan have revealed to the world a war machine without conscience that has devastated individuals, cultures, nations, and land with no regard for anything except the profits of war and America's insatiable thirst for oil. After reading their exposes, the mind reels with imagining how many more lies have been told to military families about the deaths of their sons and daughters. It is axiomatic that empires, without exception, decline and fall, and it is equally true that as they do so, courageous individuals who refuse to be pawned or conned come forth to expose the empire's nakedness. Mary Tillman has proven that one need not be a professional journalist or a decorated warrior in order to do so but merely a mother who will settle for nothing less than total transparency about the death of her son.

It is precisely the lack of conscience, mentioned above, which makes incidents like the Tillman murder and coverup not only possible but routine. Truth To Power has published numerous stories and articles on political ponerology, that is, rule by sociopathic individuals ( AKA, The Decider ) who possess no moral compass. It is worse than naïve to believe they can or will change. Moreover, we tragically delude ourselves if we believe that mainstream political candidates, purchased and promoted by corporations as the preferred "brand", can or will divest themselves from the sociopathic power milieu. The fate of America as empire was sealed when it became impossible for a common person of conscience to be elected president. That means that this empire cannot be "treated", "cleansed," "turned around", "reformed", or even "improved." It has already careened off the precipice. Where it will land, I know not. My work and yours, if you care about yourself, your loved ones, your land, your descendants is to prepare for where the long--or short, descent is taking us. In the meantime, the world is waiting for many more Mary Tillmans.