STAN GOFF: The atmosphere in a military unit like that is a locker room atmosphere. It's not philosophical.

Pat was a pretty typical kid but then he also had this gift.  --Stan Goff [36:22]

The Tillman Story  https://t.co/hGAndcJCoA

— Bacon'z Bitz 🐷🔍 (@BaconzBitz) April 22, 2025

Pat Tillman, 1976-2004.  The documentary film, titled, The Tillman Story, was shown at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2010, and was released in August 2010.

It is remarkable how the media and public institutions can completely destroy a man's good name and legacy.

At 21:40, Stan Goff explains that, 

We're supposed to believe that soldiers' motives are pure.  That they go into these situations reluctantly.  It's an imposition of a level of wisdom and maturity on soldiers that doesn't apply to 19-year-olds anywhere ever.  A 19-year-old is far less in displaying wisdom than he is in giving a practical demonstration of their masculinity.  The atmosphere in a military unit like that is a locker room atmosphere.  It's not philosophical.

Tillman was a thinker and a reader.  

24:55, Pfc, Russell Baer, 2/75 Ranger Battalion,

He was interested in Emerson and Chomsky, 

25:14, Pfc Bryan O'Neal, 2/75 Ranger Battalion

I walked in on him one time, and he was reading the Book of Mormon.  It really hit me because I am Mormon.  

So he was reading, or at least interested in what Noam Chomsky had to say in his criticism of US foreign policy and U.S. war.  What soldier in any barracks across the country is going to be caught reading Chomsky?  Nope. 

30:52  During Basic Training, Pat had a premonition that if he died, he might be used as a public relations stunt.  So he smuggled a copy of his final wishes home to Marie, his wife and widow.

I really had to kind of push back on them.  They were just sort of proceeding as if this was just they way things were gonna happen.  Probably thinking that, you know, I was so grief-stricken that I would just go along with it. 

31: 30, Goff, That's the first episode, in a way, before Pat's body is even cold.  The death didn't just belong to the family.  This was bigger than the family.  This is ours, you know, it's ours to interpret.

32:05,  The contrast of the Memorial service should have been a warning shot to the military.  You got people out there sort of speaking in glittering generalities,

Pat, your family doesn't have to worry anymore.  You are home, you are safe, and you will not be forgotten.   --Maria Shriver. 

What the hell is Maria Shriver doing speaking over a soldier's death?

32:23,  And then you've got his brother coming up there, somebody who is willing to speak the brutality of that reality for them.  

Richard Tillman, Pat's youngest brother.

Make no mistake.  He'd want me to say this, he's not with God.  He's fucking dead.  That he's not religious, so thanks for your thoughts, but he's fucking dead.

I don't regret any of that.  As far as what I was thinking, I was simply miserable, you know.  I was sad for my whole family.  I was sad for my mom, my dad, Marie, Kevin, . . .  This isn't a production; it's my brother's service.  He's not what these people wished he was.  [Truth be told, that's exactly what memorial services are about--to exalt the deceased's life for greater or worse, fiction or truth.] Everyone grabbed at Pat's death.  Not necessarily just the military.  Everybody grabbed at him.  They just chose the wrong family to try to do it in front of. 

Oh, my God.  Tillman was ordered to respond to the Jessica Lynch rescue?!