Operation Yellow Elephant

Kevin Tillman is Pat Tillman's brother. Kevin and Pat joined the Army as brothers in 2002, and ended up serving together in Afghanistan and Iraq. On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman, the former NFL football player and atheist, was killed while serving in Iraq.

Kevin, who was discharged from the Army in 2005, has written an incredibly powerful and moving article in anticipation of his brother's birthday coming up on November 6th.

I strongly encourage you all to read the whole thing.

[Kevin Tillman] It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

This has got to be the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. What a revolting development this is. Once more Bush demonstrates his unique brand of compassionate, family-oriented, Christ-like conservatism.

[link] (Patricia) Arndt, a respiratory therapist at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center and a small-business owner, has been called back to active status after 20 years as a reservist. She spent four years of active duty in the Army in the 1980s based in Germany prior to becoming "an individual mobilization augmentee reservist" -- which required her to fill in for regular duty soldiers called to overseas duty.

Last year, she said, she was transferred to another category called the Individual Ready Reserve, which made her eligible for a combat assignment. She is to report to Fort Jackson, S.C.

Her return to active duty will leave her teenage son without a parent for 18 months, she said, and cost her more than $100,000 in income during that time.

The Army's response?

Rev Mykeru has one of the few stealth videos available so far from the rather timid Freedom March including attempts to recruit marchers for the Armed Forces. Strangely, no one offered the chance to enlist wanted to 'support the troops' any more. Weird huh?

This video is raw, relatively unedited, and includes some insightful analysis by the good reverend at the end. Definitely worth seeing. Hat Tip to the beautiful and brilliant Lindsay Beyerstein.

This is really starting to smell. It's either a head fake from Rove's people, or someone[s] is dead set on keeping the leak story front and center. Skeptic Ninjas, put on your secret skeptic power lens, Bloomberg News is reporting tomorrow (7/22):

Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.