I’m not a football fan by any stretch of the imagination and my support of the Afghanistan war was tenuous at best, but let me go on record as saying this is incredibly tragic :

Pat Tillman, who walked away from his professional football career to join the Army Rangers, was killed in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a formal announcement was expected later in the day. Spokesmen at the Pentagon and U.S. Army declined comment.

There were no immediate details how Tillman died. He was 27.
. . .
Tillman played four seasons with the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals before enlisting in the Army in May 2002. The safety turned down a three-year, $3.6 million deal from Arizona.

He made the decision after returning from his honeymoon with his wife, Marie.
. . .
In 2001, Tillman turned down a $9 million, five-year offer sheet from the Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams out of loyalty to the Cardinals, and by joining the Army, he passed on millions more from the team.

It’s hard to imagine these days someone who’s so patriotic that he’s willing to sacrifice fame, fortune and, ultimately, his life in order to defend his country. Regardless of whether or not you agreed with why he was there, he’s obviously sacrificed more for his country than most of us are willing to.

And I don’t mean to trivialize this by changing the subject to politics, but I’ll be very interested to see if this affects Bush’s support among the “red state” voters who probably know a lot more about Tillman than I do…

…and I wonder if photographs like this (which the Bush Administration has been trying to keep away from the public) will be more powerful once people have a face to associate with the daily sacrifices of our soldiers.