"Inside Story of Pat Tillman" by Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer's Inside Story of Pat Tillman

"Into Thin Air" author Jon Krakauer goes behind the scenes to uncover the life and death of Pat Tillman in his latest book, "Where Men Win Glory"

By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
Wall Street Journal

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, football player Pat Tillman walked away from a lucrative contract offered by the Arizona Cardinals and instead joined the Army.

In his fifth book, "Where Men Win Glory," journalist Jon Krakauer explains why, broadening Mr. Tillman's story by weaving in an account of America's deepening involvement with Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also details how Mr. Tillman was cut down by friendly fire in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, and examines the disturbing aftermath.

Mr. Krakauer, 55 years old, has long been attracted to risk-takers. In "Into the Wild," he profiled Christopher McCandless, a young adventurer who starved to death in Alaska; and in "Into Thin Air," he chronicled a group of mountain climbers who tackled Mount Everest with heartbreaking results.

In many ways, Pat Tillman became the public face of a new generation's commitment to country and service. In addition to being a superb athlete, he was an iconoclast -- a free-thinker who read widely and admired those who challenged the status quo. After enlisting in the summer of 2002, he joined the United States Army Rangers, where he relished the grueling training program. He died at the age of 27.

The cause of Mr. Tillman's death was not at first accurately reported by the military, leading Mr. Tillman's family to allege that a cover-up had taken place. A Defense Department investigation later found that senior Army officers gave misleading information about the circumstances surrounding Mr. Tillman's death, but that there was no criminal wrongdoing in the shooting and no high-level cover-up. A congressional investigation was inconclusive on whether senior White House and Defense officials were involved in releasing information about Mr. Tillman's death.

Q - Wall Street Journal (WSJ): Mr. Tillman never publicly discussed why he joined the Army. What were his reasons?

Krakauer: He had an old-fashioned sense of duty, masculine honor and masculine pride. He really believed after 9/11 that the United States needed to go to war against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. That he had a lucrative contract didn't mean he should be excused from that duty. He felt he could contribute significantly to the war effort and make a difference. He was also drawn by the challenge. Proving himself in combat under fire resonated with him. He came from a family with a history of military service. But it wasn't simply duty to his country. It was a mix of complicated emotions.

Q- WSJ: You note that the military has always had difficulty acknowledging casualties from friendly fire. How did this situation differ?

Krakauer: The Bush administration placed more emphasis on spinning the war, on managing perceptions of the war, than on waging it well. It seemed like the Bush administration launched a propaganda campaign almost unprecedented in modern times. That's different to me. Most friendly fire incidents aren't investigated properly because of neglect or a natural inclination to cover up the embarrassing fact that they killed one of their own. You don't normally see the feverish manipulation of information that you saw with Tillman. Instantly, everyone knew it was friendly fire. But within hours, by sworn testimony, a move was made to give him a Silver Star. That's not typical in a friendly fire situation. All the forensic evidence, including his uniform and journal, were burned. This was an extraordinary case of manipulation of public perception, which is what the Bush administration specialized in.

Q - WSJ: Are you certain that the events surrounding Mr. Tillman's final hours unfolded exactly as you've described them?

Krakauer: Yes, I'm quite confident. It took a lot of time and effort. I've been working on this book for three-and-a-half to four years, and it's been a long, difficult haul. It's the most challenging book I've written. I tried very hard to get this right. I sent chapters in full to every soldier that I interviewed and quoted so that they could see their quotes. A lot of these soldiers don't share my political views. It was a risk, but it created real benefits in terms of accuracy. I also read 3,000 or 4,000 pages of testimony.

Q - WSJ: If you were able to report this, why didn't government investigators dig more deeply?

Krakauer: They were able. They didn't want to. Their conclusions weren't based on a reading of the facts. They didn't want to find out the worst. It's the opposite of a criminal prosecution or a plane crash investigation. Military investigations are designed not to find anyone guilty. And you can't investigate up the chain of command, which is a huge impediment.

Q - WSJ: You report that Mr. Tillman could have likely left the Army after serving in Iraq after 18 months. Why did he stay?

Krakauer: He was very unhappy in the Army. He knew his wife was miserable. But his sense of honor didn't let him consider it. He made a three-year commitment and he wanted to live up to it. That was his point of view, and it was entirely in keeping with his character. It didn't surprise anyone who knew him well.

Q - WSJ: You end the book with a gloomy visit to Afghanistan in early 2007. What did Mr. Tillman's sacrifice mean?

Krakauer: It didn't mean anything. It speaks to the mythology of war and how we glorify it for our national interests. There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery. And that's what his death tells us. It reminds me that the good aren't rewarded, there's no such thing as karma. Maybe it says something about the dangers of any sort of idealism that isn't tempered by pragmatism or experience.

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Movie Review: "The Hurt Locker"

"The Hurt Locker" is good, gut-slammer cinema that captures, quite accurately"

By Michael Fumento
Philelphia Inquirer, 2 Aug '09

One word keeps appearing in reviews of The Hurt Locker, the critically acclaimed war film: realism.

"Realism is the special effect," was the title of one article about the film's producers. "Realism makes for explosive cinema," read the headline of the Chicago Sun-Times review of the film, which follows a three-member Army Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team over the last 38 days of its 2004 Baghdad deployment.

Actual EOD technicians have been surprised by the description. So was I, a former Army airborne combat engineer (whose job included blowing things up) and journalist who embedded briefly in 2005 with Navy-Marine EOD near Fallujah. That surprise is because of some of the film's serious unrealities, such as:

The men repeatedly don 100-pound bomb suits (useless if the typical rigged howitzer shell goes off in your face) when remote-controlled robots are routinely used. The primary robot, the Talon, pulls the detonation apparatus apart. If it breaks down, as it did in the opening scene of the film, a smaller backup robot (called a "blowbot") carrying plastic explosives blows apart the wiring. I saw this on my first blast in Iraq.

The three EOD technicians in the film repeatedly fire at the enemy. That rarely happens, though the enemy does shoot at them. Rather, EOD meets up with MPs or other soldiers who handle the combat.

In one tense scene, a Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle jams because some of the huge rounds have fresh blood on them. No way. The amazingly powerful weapon also would have punched right through the flimsy building material that in the film protects the attackers.

It was also irritating to see the soldiers wearing uniforms they wouldn't have been issued until the next year.

In short, The Hurt Locker is not reality but what moviegoers demand: a fast-paced shoot-'em-up. The Sun-Times review title is exactly wrong: Unless the focus is on one extreme, relatively short event - such as Blackhawk Down - reality is financial death for a war film.

That's because reality is the proverbial 99 percent boredom and 1 percent sheer terror. Box-office bucks demand 99 percent action and 1 percent interlude for a bathroom break. Soldiers, too, like those movies - even after seeing the real thing.

The most obvious explanation for what the reviewers perceived as realism is that they know no more about war, Iraq, or EOD than EOD technicians know about reviewing movies.

Fortunately, they are indeed just movie reviewers. Much damage has been inflicted by journalists who "reported" on Iraq from the safety and isolation of their stateside armchairs. Or those who "reported" on combat and the conditions under which combat soldiers must live, and sometimes die, from a Baghdad hotel.

A more complimentary explanation is that the film is visually and emotionally intense, pulling in the audience. When the soldiers are spooked, you're spooked. When they're confused, you're confused.

"Where's the firing coming from?" they ask, desperately scouring the horizon. You find yourself scanning for them. The fog of war drifts from the screen into the theater.

Which is to say I thought it was a damn good movie.

What I was really looking for - besides the action, that is - was respectful treatment of the U.S. soldier in Iraq, as professional a fighter as this nation has ever deployed. And here the term realism truly applied.

The EOD soldiers were scared and often unsure. True, one was a hot dog who repeatedly and needlessly risked his life and those of his teammates. In reality, he probably would have been disciplined, if not replaced. But his actions were central to the plot.

Despite their flaws, these men did their best not just to defuse the bombs and protect U.S. troops, but to protect Iraqi civilians as well.

And there were no hints of glory. That's good. I saw a lot of things in Iraq. Mostly trash heaps, it seems. But I never saw anything glorious.

Granted, the movie soldiers repeatedly faced false dangers. But these nevertheless represented the real ones the movie didn't depict - including being ambushed en route to a mission and hitting bombs planted especially for responding EOD units. The EOD team that replaced the one I embedded with hit such a bomb in its second week of deployment; two Marines horribly burned to death.

Because the homemade bomb is the insurgents' primary weapon, there's nobody they want to kill more than those who defuse them.

That's the brutal reality. And it's a fitting tribute that the best movie to come out of the Iraq war is a testament to the brave bomb-detonators of the EOD.

"Once A Marine" by GySgt Nick Popaditch

“Once a Marine”
Nick Popaditch, with Mike Steere
Savas Beatie, 2008, $ 25.00
ISBN # 978-1-932714-47-0
www.savasbeatie.com

Only a few books leap off the shelves and demand to be read – and “Once a Marine” is one of those few.

This is the story of Gunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch, U.S. Marine Corps. It’s important to add “USMC” after his name, because in Popaditch’s story, being a Marine is integral to his survival following a grievous head wound and the subsequent rehab problems afterwards.

In true “Gunny” fashion, this is an aggressive book. “Gy Pop”, as he’s known, came into his own as a young Marine, saw combat in Desert Storm, and became a drill instructor afterwards. He’s as OOH-RAH and Semper Fi motivated as they come, and his energy and enthusiasm for all things Marine comes through loud and clear in this well-written book.

Gy’s life continues on a positive roll when he’s photographed in Baghdad in 2003, cigar-in-hand, in front of the statute of Saddam. Now known to the world as the ‘cigar Marine’, Gy Pop returns home to his loving wife April, and sons. But true to being a Marine, he volunteers for another tour in Iraq, where he’s shot in the head with an RPG in Fallujah, loses one eye, much of his sight in the other eye, and is medically retired from his beloved Marine Corps. A typical macho Marine story, one might think, but it’s Gy Pop who makes “Once a Marine” such a compelling story in the midst of such frustration of his life’s seeming unraveling.

“Once a Marine” is a spellbinding and story. From the stories of his Desert Storm days, to storming Baghdad in 2003, to the horrific story of being shot in the head by an PRG to the personal friction between him and his wife as he contemplates the premature end of his career in his beloved Marine Corps, this is the type of book that the reader will devour in an evening.

What grabs the reader aren’t the battle sequences; those who have fought tend to downplay their role in combat, and Gy Pop is no exception. Instead, his focus is on Marine Corps ethos and work ethic, his Marines, and how they all came together to assist him in his time of need. Needing assistance is unusual for Gy Pop, and he writes honestly and movingly of his struggle to accept help from his wife and sons, his Marines, and even the medical team at the “Blind Hospital.”

For a rough & tough Marine Gunnery Sergeant, Popaditch has written a brutally honest, yet incredibly moving story of his life as a Marine, and how the Marine Corps has prepared him for life afterwards. Recommended? Absolutely!

Movie Review: "Brothers at War"

BROTHERS AT WAR

Review by: William McGurn
June 30, 2009
Wall Street Journal

If you are one of those Americans who believe that we are not really at war with terrorists, Jake Rademacher has a message for you. Actually, what he has is a film about an ordinary family from Decatur, Ill., that has two members serving in Iraq. It's the kind of film that will give you a new appreciation for the men who make Independence Day possible.

The two soldiers here are Capt. Isaac Rademacher and Sgt. Joe Rademacher, a fact that makes this war highly personal for their filmmaker brother. Isaac is a West Pointer who married another West Pointer, and Joe is a sniper who graduated at the top of his class in Army Ranger school. Older brother Jake wants to know why they fight, and so he takes his camera to Iraq "to find my brothers' war."

Though "Brothers at War" focuses on the Rademachers, they nowhere pretend to be the model family. While Isaac and Joe are off risking their lives in Iraq, another brother, Thad, loses his life to drugs at home. It all makes for sibling relationships that can be close and distant at the same time.

Of the two in uniform, Joe is more reticent about talking about his experiences for the camera, and more skeptical about what his brother could have learned there -- at least during his first, relatively brief embed. As Jake puts it, "Joe needs me to have some confirmed kills, [and] then maybe I can sit next to him at the dinner table."

Over the course of 110 minutes, the film takes us back and forth from Iraq to the home front. The actual fighting is minimal, and politics is completely absent. In some ways, the flatness provides the emotional punch: Watch Isaac kissing his wife and child goodbye before he boards a plane for his latest deployment to Iraq -- and then try telling Mrs. Rademacher that her husband is not so much fighting a war as participating in an "overseas contingency operation."

The scenes in Iraq have a similar feel, less about capturing the big firefights with the enemy than putting faces on the grunts doing the hard work that needs to be done. However many news accounts you may read about what these men go up against every day, it can't compare to hearing a National Guardsman sitting atop a roof in the Sunni Triangle speaking with great relief about the time he didn't squeeze the trigger -- the moment he realized that the terrorist with an AK-47 in his sights was a child with a toy.

While many reviewers apparently find Mr. Rademacher's presence in the film irritating and wonder why there isn't a visual of a wounded or dead American, the military families who have been flocking to this film have a different reaction. When they see Mr. Rademacher in his Kevlar helmet and vest sweating away in the oven-like interior of a Stryker combat vehicle, they see what life is like for their husband, son, or brother.

When Mr. Rademacher shows soldiers cleaning their guns as they watch videos of the TV series "The OC," they get a picture of how their loved ones relax. And when they hear that Pennsylvania Guard unit getting the news about a soldier that has been killed by a foreign sniper, they share the frustration -- and the desire to get the guy responsible.

Though neither pro-war nor antiwar, this film does offer something that probably explains why one reviewer dismissed it as "achingly patriotic": It shows our soldiers and Marines as professionals. In short, there are no victims here, just decent men doing a tough job. In New York, Washington and Los Angeles that may not sound like exciting fare. But in places like Oceanside, Ca., Savannah, Ga., Kileen, Texas., Norfolk, Va., etc. -- cities that are home to our military families -- "Brothers at War" speaks to audiences filled with people who know firsthand what it is like to have a husband or brother in Iraq.

Though it does have its patriotic moments, they are quiet and hard to draw out from men who would rather joke about their cheating girlfriends back home. While spending five days with a reconnaissance unit reporting on foreign terrorists crossing through the Syrian border, Mr. Rademacher asks the men he is with why they fight. A young Army specialist named Christopher MacKay says he's fighting for a better life for his nieces.

Mr. Rademacher presses him: Would it be worth it if it ends up costing you your life? Spc. MacKay answers matter of factly. "Yeah, I'd give my life for America any day. Wouldn't think twice."

That's not John Wayne speaking. That's a young man who knows what he signed up for, knows why he signed up, and knows who he's fighting for. In an America where Michael Jackson's death gets more press coverage than a Medal of Honor winner, it's sure nice to see at least one camera filming men who really matter.

See "Taking Chance' on HBO, 21 Feb

MOVIE REVIEW
Taking Chance
By David J. Danelo
USNI's "Proceedings", Feb 2009

"Taking Chance" written by Ross Katz and Michael Strobl. Directed by Ross Katz. Starring Kevin Bacon and Blanche Baker. HBO Films. February 2009.

Hollywood illustrates some military stories distastefully, particularly when politics leaves veracity open to debate. HBO’s Taking Chance, a tale of devotion to fallen warriors, is not one of them.

This honorable, poignant, and dignified rendering of Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl’s escort of a Marine slain in Iraq pays tribute not only to those who have died in battle, but also to all who bear witness to their final journey home.

It’s usually the duty of the casualty assistance calls officer to come face-to-face
with a grieving parent and attempt simultaneously to explain death and honor life on
a grateful nation’s behalf. In 2004, Lieutenant Colonel Strobl (played by Kevin Bacon) paused from churning out personnel reports at Quantico and volunteered to shoulder a portion of that burden himself. As depicted by Mr. Bacon, Strobl is guilt-stricken that he is neither in the fight nor doing a greater part to support Marines in harm’s way.

Recalling the actor’s 1992 portrayal of Captain Jack Ross in A Few Good Men, viewers may struggle to imagine anyone other than Bacon in this role. The psychological
juxtaposition of (Captain) Bacon thundering away at a witness in a courtroom
16 years ago with (Lieutenant Colonel) Bacon wrapping up a less-than-eventful
twilight tour adds another layer of realism to his present character. No matter how many degrees of separation he may be from the real thing, Kevin Bacon is to Marine officers as Al Pacino is to Sicilian dons.

The journey itself is predictable: we immediately know what happened to then-Private First Class Chance Phelps (his promotion warrant to lance corporal arrived after his death), we know where he is going, and we know the reason. Less certain, however, is Strobl’s internal compass, which is what keeps the film interesting, even engrossing. “What about you? What’s your deal?” asks a curly-haired civilian teenager while transporting Strobl from Dover to Philadelphia International Airport. “My deal is . . . complicated,” the officer replies. The reverse winds up
to be just as true: the young driver had signed up for casualty duty after two of his high school pals were sent to Iraq, yet he struggles to relate to Strobl’s passion and enthusiasm for the martial calling.

Stroble's reactions to the civilian interactions - most are respectful, others awkward— sustain Taking Chance’s dramatic thread. Strobl smiles thinly and nods after being upgraded to first class by a tearyeyed flight attendant, then stares down a TSA employee who badgers him about his bag of metal objects (PFC Phelps’s personal effects) and his metal-spangled Service Green Alpha uniform jacket. At each stop along the way—Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Billings—pilots, luggage handlers, and travelers place caps and hands over hearts, pausing to pay homage. As the hearse from Rafferty’s Funeral Home snakes through the arid mountain passes of Montana into Wyoming, carsand trucks turn on headlights, eventually forming an impromptu funeral procession led by an 18-wheeler.

The film strikes two particular emotional chords. First, Marines love each other. The
brotherhood is sometimes distilled into more antiseptic phrases, such as “fierce
devotion to duty.” The film avoids hollow sentimentality and instead conveys the
depth of enduring affection and fraternity that goes with wearing the uniform. More significant, Americans love that Marines love each other. We “support the troops,”
in part, because all of us—military or civilian—long for human connections of
such profundity and self-sacrifice that they would transcend death. The pudgy businessman and spindly cowgirl whose hands cover their hearts affirm as citizens that the Marine who died risked his fate on their behalf. And, rightly, they love him for it.

These are not new notions, but HBO’s restrained, exemplary illustration of them
makes this a striking film. Taking Chance has already been nominated for the Grand
Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival; it should also be considered for other
awards. Even if it receives no formal recognition, the film deserves praise for depicting the squared-away nobility and solemn grandeur of America’s relationship with her Marines. Make no mistake: Lance Corporal Chance Phelps would be proud of this film.

Mr. Danelo served in Iraq as a Marine captain in 2004. A frequent contributor to Proceedings, he is the author of Blood Stripes: The Grunt’s View of the War in Iraq (Stackpole Books, 2006). Mr. Danelo was wounded near Fallujah three days before Lance Corporal Chance Phelps was killed.