Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch Fall Down Bush Admin's Memory Hole

It turns out that an outbreak of amnesia has beset current and former Bush Administration officials when they are asked about the propaganda they put into place concerning Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. Call in the CDC to investigate. Or name the pandemic here. No, not “Bird Flu.” How about “Rumsfeld Syndrome?”

OMG! Can the amnesia spread to the whole population? Someone contact the CDC and get them on the case now! This amnesia could be the work of some insidious drug passed into the sewers there at the White House, or somesuch. And we’d never know, except for some clever work on the part of the Congressional Committee investigating the propaganda tales about Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch. Here’s a bit from ABCNews:

The committee says that in their quest to find out when officials first knew about the possibility that Tillman’s death was not due to enemy fire, they were “frustrated by a near universal lack of recall,” according to the report.

The committee interviewed several senior White House officials including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, communications director Dan Bartlett, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan, and chief speech writer Michael Gerson.

“Not a single one could recall when he learned about the fratricide or what he did in response,” says the report.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers told the committee that he learned by the end of April that Tillman’s death was possibly due to friendly fire, but that he could not remember whether or not he passed that information to Rumsfeld.

Members of Tillman’s platoon, however, knew “almost immediately” that Tillman had been killed accidentally by fellow Rangers, according to the report. Within days of his death, Colonel Craig Nixon, a top officer in Tillman’s battalion, passed on that information to the commander of the joint task force in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChyrstal, who in turn sent a message to top generals, including General John Abizaid, commander of CENTCOM.