The Army lied about Pat Tillman? Same as it ever was

If his life had been written as a novel, Pat Tillman would have been too good to be real. As it happened, his Army superiors and others did everything they could to make Tillman’s story far better than it really was.

You may recall that Tillman was the NFL player who turned his back on a multimillon-dollar contract to enlist in the Army. Moved by the events of 9/11, Tillman wanted to do more than talk America’s enemies to death. He wanted to get his hands dirty by fighting in person.

You may also recall that Tillman, after getting his wish, was killed on April 22, 2004, during action in Afghanistan. And that, almost immediately, Tillman was labeled a hero. Eventually, he would be awarded a posthumous Silver Star and become a symbol of American heroism … and so on.

Only trouble was, it was all a lie. Tillman was a hero, just as any soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who serves in a combat zone is a hero. But his death wasn’t heroic. It was a dirty, meaningless, empty gesture, the result of mixup that turned a firefight into a massive cluster-screwup. Tillman and an Afghan soldier were killed by their own troops.

That didn’t stop the Army, though. Nor Bush’s White House. The powers that were lied from the get-go, portraying Tillman as a real-life version of Captain America, doing what they could to save face and to provide public support for a war that had been progressively becoming a losing proposition.

Find this hard to believe? So did I. But then I began looking at the evidence, and the results are inescapable. That much and more will become clear when filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary “The Tillman Story” opens across the country (it premiered Jan. 23 at Sundance and opened on Friday in major markets).

It may take awhile to reach Spokane. But when it does come, “The Tillman Story” is a must-see. After “Restrepo,” it might be the most important war documentary of the year.

Below : The trailer for “The Pat Tillman Story.”