Head shots

The list of US service people who we have good reason to suspect have been executed by their comrades or superiors while serving in the current crusades is growing slowly but steadily. Whether the the extra-judicial murder of troops on one's own side is common in wartime or whether it represents a bold new departure for the US, the Iraq and Afghan campaigns are the in which I've read about this kind of thing in the press.

The latest case concerns Clara Durkin, who was killed with a single shot to the head at an airbase in Afghanistan.

From The Boston Herald:

The Quincy soldier mysteriously slain by a bullet to the head on a secure Afghanistan airbase feared something might happen to her after discovering “something she didn’t like,” her devastated family revealed.

Massachusetts National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin, 30, was found with a single gunshot wound to her head behind a building at Bagram Airbase on Sept. 27.

“The last time she was home she said she had seen things that she didn’t like and she had raised concerns that had annoyed some people,” said Durkin’s sister Fiona Canavan, 44, of Quincy.

“She said, and I thought she was joking, that if anything happened to her we had to investigate.”


The most famous soldier of the present bunch to have probably been executed was Pat Tillman, the former NFL star. His death was originally reported as being due to enemy action. Then the story changed to a friendly fire accident, as this December 2004 Washinton Post article records:

"Cease fire! Friendlies!" Tillman cried out.

Smoke drifted from a signal grenade Tillman had detonated minutes before in a desperate bid to show his platoon members they were shooting the wrong men. The firing had stopped. Tillman had stood up, chattering in relief. Then the machine gun bursts erupted again.

"I could hear the pain in his voice," recalled the young Ranger days later to Army investigators. Tillman kept calling out that he was a friendly, and he shouted, "I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" His comrade recalled: "He said this over and over again until he stopped."

In September 2005, The San Fransisco Chronicle went into the details of the death and subsequent coverup in a story that also revealed that the Tillman family was deamanding the whole truth.

As more details trickled out, it emerged this year that Tillman had been finished off by being shot three times in the head from close range (around 10 metres) after first being shot in the legs, chest and hand. It is hard to envision that the "friendly" soldier who fired those headshots didn't know he was shooting at another US soldier, so an extra-judicial execution/assassination looks likely.

The Wonkette has a story on this, and Prison Planet has gone ape on it.

The report also states that "No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene - no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck."

The article also reveals that "Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments."

So there was no evidence whatsoever of friendly fire, but the ballistics data clearly indicated that the three head shots had been fired from just 10 yards away and then the Army tried to concoct a hoax friendly fire story and sent gloating back-slapping e mails congratulating each other on their success while preventing the doctors from exploring the possibility of murder. How can any sane and rational individual weigh this evidence and not come to the conclusion that Tillman was deliberately gunned down in cold blood?