WMWG Part 10; 2002

2002...

·         Hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were being killed, and the rest had fled to the countryside or Pakistan. But the 3 enemy leaders at the top of the hit list were still at large. Those leaders were Bin Laden, Mohammed Omar, and Haqqani. Omar had recently promoted Haqqani to commander in chief of the Taliban.

·         After Bin Laden and Haqqani escaped to Pakistan, they started reorganizing their network of fighters in the Pakistani city of Miram Shah, where Haqqani would direct Taliban strikes on the U.S. and NATO for many years.

·         “War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians.” – Chris Hedges, “A Culture of Atrocity”.

·         By April 8^th, 2002 ... By this time Pat Tillman had weighed all the options of enlisting into the military, and decided it was what he needed to do. Pat’s brother Kevin also decided to enlist with him. They decided to enlist as ordinary grunts instead of taking the officer path.

·         May 4^th, 2002 ... Pat and his long time girlfriend Marie were married. A week later Kevin and Pat signed contracts committing them to three years service as Army Rangers. Pat and Kevin’s parents, along with Marie’s family, tried to have a kind of intervention to talk them out of doing it.

11 pages of notes later and we’re at the part where Pat joins the Army.

·         June 2002 ... Kevin and Pat were sworn into the military

·         July 8^th, 2002 ... Moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.

·         Because of his celebrity, the Bush Administration turned his enlistment into a marketing bonanza for the “Global War on Terror”. People like Rumsfeld continued to track basically everything Pat did. The Major General John Vines even wrote letter to him begging him to join the 82nd Airborne Division instead of becoming a Ranger.

·         September 20^th 2002 ... Pat and Kevin completed basic training. Stayed in Georgia for another 5 weeks to complete Advanced Individual Training, which is very similar to Basic.

·         October 2002 ... Bush tried persuading to UN Security Council to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

·         Pat and Kevin finished Airborne school and the Ranger Indoctrination Program shortly before Christmas of this year. They were based at Fort Lewis, Washington.

From July to almost Christmas, Pat only got to see Marie a handful of times. In the text, it provides many excerpts of Pat’s private journal. In these excerpts you can see how much he truly loves and cherishes his wife. It is such a beautiful thing to see the inside of a person’s heart in that way when they are separated from their loved ones for so long and going through such a hell as boot camp. The excerpts also show a glimpse at what the military is really like and what kind of changes he had to assimilate to from his normal everyday life.