THE FOX IN THE HEN HOUSE

In an example of what happens when a body investigates itself, the Army announced that it was disciplining a number of officers for critical errors in the shooting death of Pat Tillman.

The military laid most of the blame on Philip Kensinger, a retired three-star general who led Army special operations after September 11, 2001. He was censured for “a failure of leadership” and accused of lying to investigators. A disciplinary letter recommending his demotion was added to his files.

But the official reprimands issued to three other high-ranking Army officers by Army Commanding General William Wallace are only mildly critical of their mistakes and sometimes darn near praiseworthy of them.

One letter said that retired Brigadier General Gary Jones used “due vigor, diligence and professionalism” in his handling of the case.

A half-ass apology was included in the other two letters, the first to Brigadier General Gina Farrisee “I know that all of this is much clearer with the benefit of hindsight. I suspect that, upon reflection, you wished you had done more to act on the medical examiners concerns”.

And the second to Brigadier General James Nixon “I am mindful that you never intended to deprive the Tillman family of the truth and only intended to delay notification until you had the facts”.

General Wallace also added to each letter “You should not consider this as an adverse action. This document will not be filed in any system of records maintained by the Army”.

I imagine you noticed that none of this has anything to do with the actual shooting of Tillman, but only the cover-up. The Army knew within hours that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, but this information was kept from the public and his family for five weeks.

And there you have the governments system of taking care of their own.

The California Curmudgeon