PLAYING THE ATHEISM CARD TO COVER-UP A CRIME! click here

This is another truth essay that was emailed to me by one of my good friends.

The journalist, Stan Goff, writes with complete veracity and with accurate investigation about a cover-up so vile, so contemptible it makes many of the military leaders inside the Pentagon look like a bunch of Marquis de Sades.

This is just one of many articles that goes behind the scenes of the military machinery to reveal some hidden shenanigans. What shame, the truth divulges! No wonder, those who live in a veil of rationalizations do not want us to know how, with the use of words or Orwellian language they justify their corrupt actions.

Using a person's belief systems to attack them (the victims of the cover-up) is to me, so grievous and shameful. But it seems, nothing can bring disgrace to those who cannot see anything except what they perceive as WINNING. Their creed is THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS, no matter who gets hurt.

The ends justify the means" is a phrase encompassing two beliefs:
1. Morally wrong actions are sometimes necessary to achieve morally right outcomes.

2. Actions can only be considered morally right or wrong by virtue of the morality of the outcome.

Conversely, people who believe that the consequences of an immoral action are greater than those of the expected outcome will often say that the ends do not justify the means.

So many conscienceless incidents have taken place in the neo-con war fiascos, which have sacrificed America's moral soundness. I just wonder HOW MANY YEARS WILL IT TAKE TO GAIN BACK OUR HONOR, AMERICA'S RESPECT...? I suspect too many!! thinkingblue

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Playing
the Atheism Card Against Pat Tillman's Family
By Stan Goff
Truthdig.com
Friday 28 July 2006

Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich has taken Christ into his heart, or so he says. Like my old colleague, Lt. Gen. William G. ("Jerry") Boykin, he has also carried the organically entrapped messiah onto the heathen-infested battlegrounds of Southwest Asia. Kauzlarich is the subject of my exposition today, but Boykin is his context.

You all remember Jerry Boykin-the general who, as part of the Bush 2003 civil relations effort in Iraq, called Muslims idol worshippers.

Back in the Reagan days, Boykin and I were simultaneously assigned to the
allegedly super-secret Delta Force. He was a major then, and he would organize
prayer breakfasts for the unit, driving many of us out of the building to
purchase sausage-biscuits. His evangelical lunacy was already under siege
then. Special Operations is a motley fraternity, in which operators are as
likely to worship Odin or an oak tree as they are to attend Sunday services.

Boykin's recent rise is symptomatic of War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's
fascination with Special Operations-in spite of its generally dismal record.
Kauzlarich was on the same career fast track when he was the 75th Ranger
Regiment's "cross commander" at Forward Operating Base Salerno, Khoust,
Afghanistan, in 2004.

Bishop Boykin, shooting from the lip, asserted in 2003 that the U.S.
military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq involved "an Army of God" squaring
off against Satan.

Beelzebub himself! Can't say Jerry lacks ambition. Of course, the
Satanists in this case were the very Muslims that the administration was
trying to recruit as political puppets in the oil patch.

For this subtle bit of international relations, Boykin was punished by
promotion to the position of deputy undersecretary of defense for...
intelligence. Yes, the pun is nearly unbearable.

And so Boykin ascended. As the Haitian proverb says: The higher the monkey climbs, the more you see his ass.

Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, on the other hand, is not exactly being placed center-stage at the Pentagon. More than any other single person below the rank of general, he is probably most responsible for the Pentagon's embarrassment when NFL-player-turned-Army-Ranger Pat Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, by his own comrades.

Kauzlarich has been energetically avoiding responsibility for the fratricidal incident ever since.

"When you die," [Tillman's commanding officer] Kauzlarich said, "I mean,
there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you
don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You
are worm dirt."

It appears from reading the documents in the incident that he and others
in the military may have violated multiple laws-including obstruction of
justice, evidence tampering and conspiracy.

Kauzlarich may have conspired with others to award an inappropriate Silver
Star, complete with a phony account of the events surrounding Tillman's death.
Members of Tillman's chain of command attended Tillman's memorial service
without breathing a word to the family about what really happened, and it
appears, again from the documents, that Kauzlarich deep-sixed the original
investigation, which he then had redone under his personal supervision.

The Army's criminal investigation division and the Pentagon's Inspector
General are currently investigating Tillman's death and the events that
ensued.

Kauzlarich now looks to Nov. 7, 2006, with a gnawing disquiet. Only a thin
congressional majority that stand between a nemesis like Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)
and the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee. Subpoena authority
might transform a mere gavel into a mighty political weapon.

But in the meantime, a recent ESPN.com exposé by Mike Fish aired an
interview with Kauzlarich, who was the "cross commander" of the Rangers in
Khoust, Afghanistan, in April 2004. Kauzlarich, in a stunning display of Christian empathy, blamed the family for continuing to ask questions about the circumstances of Pat's death, and suggested that the reason they'd found no closure was that infidels such as themselves (the Tillmans did not belong to a church), when they die, are only "worm dirt."

A choice of words worthy of Bishop Boykin, who is surely beaming with pride at this officer's devout diction.

"His parents continue to ask for it to be looked at," Kauzlarich told Fish
petulantly. "And that is really their prerogative. And if they have the right
backing, the right powerful people in our government to continue to let it
happen, then that is the case."

Playing the victim. A broadly effective tactic in the case of
international military aggression, domestic battery (she made me do it) and
politically motivated cover-ups.

In fact, powerful people in government have had to be dragged kicking and
screaming into the case by the dogged persistence of Pat's family. So far the
government's efforts have been to assign aides to do enough to get the family
off its back, and submit queries to the military that are answered with the
same contradictions and equivocations that provoked the family's suspicion in
the first place.

"But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide,"
Kauzlarich told ESPN, "and the parents have basically said, 'OK, it was an
unfortunate accident.' And they let it go. So this is-I don't know, these people have a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs."

Nothing to do with the fact that the Department of Defense lied to them
until the impending redeployment of in-the-know Ranger batallion back to the
U.S. made the revelation of fratricide inevitable ... oh no.

The office of Defense Department public relations official Lawrence Di
Rita should have purchased high-quality shredders for all commanders. The
documents pertaining to the first three of six investigations contain generous
and often gratuitous redactions. They were given to the Tillman family, and
through them to CNN, to ESPN-oh yes, and to me. They show that it was the
impending redeployment of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, Pat Tillman's unit, in
which the real story of his death was general knowledge, that compelled the
Department of Defense to come clean, sort of.

"When you die," the Reverend Kauzlarich explained to ESPN's Fish, "I mean,
there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you
don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You
are worm dirt."

A theological term perhaps.

I don't doubt for a minute that Kauzlarich's version of spirituality is a
kind of quid pro quo-a simple exchange of belief for immortality would strike
the hardest of bargainers as a pretty good deal. It even trumps the dissonance
of the Warrior Jesus, the Prince of Peace mounted on a Humvee, perhaps manning
the .50-cal, in Mazar-i-Sharif or Fallujah.

If you can sustain that contradiction, it is not particularly remarkable
to believe you are a Lamb of God at the same time you deploy religious belief
as a disingenuous dodge in defense of your career.

"So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more," continued
Kauzlarich, "that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know
how an atheist thinks.... You know what? I don't think anything will make them
happy, quite honestly. I don't know. Maybe they want to see somebody's head on
a platter. But will that really make them happy? No, because they can't bring
their son back."

So we get to it at last. Kauzlarich imagines himself as John the Baptist,
and Mary Tillman as Salome. Poor, poor man. Wretched, wretched woman.

I imagine a fish decal on Kauzlarich's car, one that has a double
significance: Jesus, of course, cloning fish for the starving masses, but also
a red herring.

Kauzlarich is in a state of dread-not the existential variety, since he
has already cut the deal to survive death. His dread is more immediate and
secular.

A Ranger captain was assigned to investigate the death of Pat
Tillman-Richard Scott, then commander of Headquarters Company, 2/75 Rangers.
Scott carried out his task with integrity, and the Article 15-6 investigation
was completed in two weeks. That investigation determined two things: (1) The
fellow Rangers who shot Tillman (and an Afghan that the military has never
credited with a human being's name) violated their own rules of engagement and
were possibly criminally negligent and (2) that the order that led to
splitting the platoon-one vigorously and rightly opposed by the platoon leader
on the ground-was responsible for setting up the communications breakdown that
resulted in the incident.

It is not legal in the military to dispose of investigations or to compel
or allow witnesses to change statements, and then make the original statements
disappear, but that is precisely what happened in the case of Pat Tillman.
When Kauzlarich took over the investigation from Scott, Kauzlarich's role in
the incident disappeared and criminal charge recommendations were transformed
into wrist-slapping nonjudicial punishments.

Even before the first investigation was complete-nay, even before
Tillman's unit returned from the field to conduct an "after-action review" to
determine what happened-everyone in Tillman's chain of command, including
Kauzlarich, appears to have conspired to draft a recommendation for a
Silver Star award as part of the intentional development of a fictional
account to cover up the fratricide.

This was in April-May 2004. And for those who don't remember, these months
were a catastrophic cascade of setbacks, bad news and rank scandal, including
the dual rebellion in Iraq and the first public release of the Abu Ghraib
photos. The death by fratricide of a famous young man (who was resisting the
Department of Defense efforts to turn him into a jingo icon) ran headlong into
the DoD public affairs narrative of precision and professionalism (in an elite
unit). That was very bad news.

But with every stick, there is a carrot.

If this story could be covered up, for just a while, it had spin capacity.
Pat could be turned into a martyr-jingo icon. An account could be constructed
that would map directly onto the television-stunned social imagination of the
American public. A tale worthy of the arrested development of a nation that
believes in the fantasies of masculine adolescence.

And that is precisely what they did, Kauzlarich included. They drafted a
Silver Star and a docudrama lie about an intense encounter with a determined
enemy in which the obedient patriot sets an example worthy of a recruiting
poster. A Tom Clancy joint. The real Pat Tillman was not only of no use, he
was a net negative. Real people get in the way.

They never counted on his brother Kevin discovering that there was an initial investigation that vanished. They never counted on a mother and father who were strong enough to demand the truth about what had happened, and determined enough to rescue the real person that was Pat Tillman from the spin machine into which the Pentagon tried to feed his body.

Pat himself, after seeing the Iraq war firsthand and declaring it
to be "so fucking illegal," quipped to his fellow soldiers that the military
seemed to be so inept that it couldn't even construct a credible lie. How
prescient was that?

Kauzlarich, like Boykin and all their ilk, has the spiritual depth of his
own skin, which is what he is trying to save ... whether in an exchange of
faith for immortality or in deflecting the sorry truth onto a bereaved and
angered family with cheap revival-tent accusations of "atheism."

Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, showed me a page from Pat's journal when he was 16 years old. It was Pat's reflection on why he had decided, once and for all, that he didn't need organized religion. The entry was motivated by Pat's grief at the death of an old family cat. Pat wasn't comfortable with the idea that one could love another creature that was being excluded from the bargain in the afterlife. He and his brothers grew up between a river and the mountains, where they roamed countless miles and delighted in the ceaseless interplay of geography, climate, flora and fauna. In his journal entry, Pat speculated about this singular universality, and made up his mind that one didn't need some anti-material monarchy buzzing with angels to accommodate himself to mortality.

Pat never felt separate enough from the world to despise the worms. And so Kauzlarich's _expression of fear and loathing for the world would have amused Pat.

Pat's ashes are adrift from where they were scattered along the Pacific Ocean, mixing back into the elements with which he was so at home; while Ralph Kauzlarich and the Pentagon fret about a five-foot-two-inch mother who refuses to make them an offering of her fear. Surely Pat Tillman is laughing.
--------
The author of this essay, Stan Goff, is a retired veteran of the US Army Special Forces. During an active-duty career that spanned 1970 to 1996, he served with the elite Delta Force and Rangers, and in Vietnam,
Guatemala, Grenada, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Somalia and Haiti.
He is a veteran of the Jungle Operations Training Center in Panama and also taught military science at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Goff is the author of the books Hideous Dream-A Soldier's Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti, Full Spectrum Disorder-The Military in the New American Century and Sex & War. In this article Goff writes on the events surrounding the fratricidal death of Army Ranger and former NFL player Pat Tillman, and the possible military coverup that ensued.
Goff argues that Tillman's commanding officer, in a recent ESPN magazine interview, made a series of shockingly callous statements about the Tillman family's search for the truth because the officer was trying
to divert attention from the role he may have played in the alleged coverup.
Goff has written extensively on these matters in the past. His published articles can be found at the online publication From the Wilderness.
His research included a detailed review of more than 2,500 pages of official briefings and documents from three investigations, in addition to extensive interviews with Tillman family members and some of the
soldiers in Tillman's unit.

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The last 3 paragraphs of the above essay are so poignant, reflecting on
the spirituality of Pat Tillman and his connection with all life, all living
forms, not one being less or more than the other. A view we all should
share especially regarding humanity. All of us are equal because we are
all the same... that is, we are born, we live to ponder and question and then we
die. I believe there would be no wars if the human being could feel such
affinity with life and its wonderful mysteries.

I just received this email from Buddist Connection which I would
like to share, it perhaps can bring clarity to those who believe in a hereafter
for the themselves ( gone to a better place) what one may feel when their
beliefs are in a here-and-now. Thanks thinkingblue

BUDDHISM CONNECT

LamaShenpenHookham

What Doesn't Die

Summary: Looking at the nature of the essence of a person that lives on.

A student writes: "I think if other people went on, to whatever they next experience, in whatever form they are, but still as that recognisably individual person I love, then I wouldn't feel sadness and loss to the same degree.

They are on their path, I on mine, and I had the fortune and privilege to know them, to be associated with them at some stage. I can pray for them on their path, I can wish them well.

If virtually all of them ceases at the point of death, their personality, the quirks that make up them as a person and only some essence that was there at the core of them, that doesn't have any personal flavour, as it were, is what carries on after death, then most of what I loved
and have known is lost and stops at death.

That is then loss and ending of the person I loved. It doesn't really make much impact on my feeling to know that some impersonal core of them might continue. If the person inside, experiencing life as it is now, if that continues, then I feel it isn't the end. I cannot see them, but they are not gone, their chance is not over, my hope for them can be there.

So, I still have a question. Is it clearer? Am I asking a question that just shows a lack of understanding and cannot be answered?"

Lama Shenpen writes: No your question doesn’t show a lack of understanding – it’s a good question.

You can start looking for the answer yourself right now in this life. Look at the person or people you love and really link into the love you have for them.

Then ask yourself is it their body you love? Their body as it is now, as it will be? How about if they lost their face, or their limbs - would you still love them? If they became paralyzed and/or couldn’t talk - would you still love them?

What would that feel like? What would be the them that you loved?

If they became disorientated with Alzheimer’s or dementia, are they still the same person - do you still love them? What is the core and/or essence of that love? What is the most important thing of all about your connection to them?

It isn’t really any one thing is it? It’s an intuitive sense that their being is real and matters - their being has meaning and gives the rest of us meaning. We may hate the circumstances we find ourselves in yet that person is still a person and we know that. If we try to turn our backs as if we didn’t care we feel diminished ourselves.

Look at it this way. The person you think is there this moment is gone the next and yet their story continues and has meaning.

Their essence is at the heart of their story - much of that story you don’t know and will never know and yet while they share this world with us our lives are mysteriously intertwined - we are integral to their world and we to theirs. This is inescapable.

The love we put into that connection is not something that can be grasped - it isn’t anywhere, it is not in time. Love is a choice we make to be truly human and when we choose to be truly human we find we are inseparable from all other humans - quirks and all.

Apart from their quirks they are their Awakened Buddha Nature in which there is no real past present and future - that is such an astonishing and wonderful thing to realise.

The quirks are all still there - but what is shining through them is what is of lasting value. It’s not an impersonal essence - its a living essence that we can communicate with in a genuine way on all sorts of levels.

I find that really inspiring. How about you?

--- By Lama Shenpen Hookham

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OTHER READS: Pat Tillman, Our Hero - Tillman opposed Iraq war - Why Did Pat Tillman Die?

"As the Chronicle put it, family and friends are now unveiling "a side of Pat Tillman not widely known-a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history looks...to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author." Tillman had very un-embedded feelings about the Iraq War. His close friend Army Spec. Russell Baer remembered, "I can see it like a movie screen. We were outside of [an Iraqi city] watching as bombs were dropping on the town.... We were talking. And Pat said, 'You know, this war is so fucking illegal.' And we all said, 'Yeah.' That's who he was. He totally was against Bush." With these revelations, Pat Tillman the PR icon joins WMD and Al Qaeda connections on the heap of lies used to sell the Iraq War." from this blog: Alabama-Democrat

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