Fallen ex-NFL star Pat Tillman's first mission in Iraq was the wildly hyped rescue of Jessica Lynch - an operation the elite Army Ranger blasted as a PR stunt, a new book says.
"Do not mistake me - I wish everyone in trouble to be rescued, but sending this many folks for a single low ranking soldier screams of media blitz," Tillman wrote in a journal entry revealed in a new book documenting his friendly fire death.
Lynch's case was one of the war's most glaring examples of Pentagon propaganda: She was abducted without anyone firing a shot, but she was said to be captured in a heroic gun battle.
Tillman's saga is equally galling.
The Pentagon initially claimed Tillman, 27, was a hero who died from enemy gunfire in 2004 while trying to save a group of ambushed soldiers in Afghanistan. Only after Tillman's furious family demanded probes into his death did it emerge that he was killed by one of his own.
Tillman left the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army with his brother after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was always skeptical of being used as a tool of the government, according to Jon Krakauer's "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman."
The former safety wrote in an official Army form that, in the event of his death, he did not want the "military having any direct involvement in my funeral."
It was something Tillman felt so strongly about that he voiced his concern to a fellow soldier, the book says.
"I don't know how the conversation got brought up, but one night he said that he was afraid that if something happened to him, they would parade him through the streets," Spc. Jade Lane told Krakauer. "Those were his exact words: 'I don't want them to parade me through the streets.'"
