“I have never quite gotten the Pat Tillman story out of my system. Only now am I understanding why. It has been six years and two days since he died, his head blown off amid a pile of rocks on the side of a hill in Afghanistan, murdered by guys on his own team, other U.S. soldiers. After lying about it, the military eventually called it friendly fire and treated it as a mistake... I was looking for tears, when I should have been looking for facts. Dannie Tillman did what a nation full of high-paid, overblown journalists should have done. She went after the real story while the beautiful people on TV and the nerds with notepads broadcast and wrote morality plays.”
– Bill Dwyre, The Los Angeles Times, April 24, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0424-dwyre-20100424,0,1036733.column?track=rss
Who cares what Plato; Lao Tse said
When Rumsfeld's lies are cast in lead?
The Pentagon's a pentagram,
The Internet's the telegram—
The noble lie is just a lie.
A general must first be sly
To win his war with hearts and minds.
The bullet's just a contract signed
To seal the deal, to back the line;
To backdate steals, to strip the mine.
And if a lord becomes a pleb,
He'll tangle too in warfare webs
And feed the beast with fangs that gleam:
He signed his life for sake of team.
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1 comment:
cummings or kipling?
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
(i'd never read the full poem - it's awesome)
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_the_young_british_soldier.htm
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