Pat Tillman: Shot Point Blank? by SignyM

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Pat Tillman: Shot Point Blank?

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 3, 2007 04:41
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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 8:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Obtuseness works in both directions. One of the problems is that people hear what they want to hear. People claim Bush lied because he said there were WMDs in Iraq, but while I believe Bush believed that, that’s not really what he said.

No, he had others say it:

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.
- Colin Powell, February 5, 2003
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html

Tell me how you get - "Saddam doesn't have WMDs" out of that speech?"

Then there's the whole aluminum tube thing and the plutonium from Africa thing and our wonderful press, adhering to Hero's principle of not questioning, didn't question. Worked well, didn't it?

Quote:
It was repeated numerous times that this war was a long commitment.

Uh... wow. You think so? When exactly did Bush & co. start saying this?

They did say "Shock and Awe." Doesn't that sound kind of quick and easy? "Mission accomplished." Doesn't that sound kind of like it was smooth sailing and we're all done? Is there another meaning to "mission accomplished" that I've missed?

Quote:
It’s not all the fault of the government – people hear what they want to hear.

People hear the spin that the government puts out - like the pre-made news reports they released to the press in 2003-2004, govt propaganda made to look like legitimate news. (Sorry, can't find a source. NPR reported on it... still looking) According to Hero, this is all an A-OK part of our free nation, the govt controlling the information we recieve.

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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 8:26 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Time for neurological response (reflex) is .3 seconds, time per round is 0.25 seconds. I can see how one could have two rounds close together (before the body jerks and the head goes back), but not three.

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 8:30 AM

FLETCH2

Could someone actually move their body a significant amount in 0.25 of a second?

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 8:39 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Yes. The interesting thing about neurologically driven movement (as oppopsed to intentional movement) is that it's unconstrained by damping mechanisms such as tendon reflex (stretch receptors in the tendons and muscles that feed back to the spine and reduce the force of movement) and speed modulation (in the cerebellum).

BTW, the speed of intentional reaction is .3 - .5 seconds which is what I based my time on. An actual reflex would be faster.

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 9:43 AM

FLETCH2

That's interesting, however I was thinking more in terms of inertia. Can the muscles generate enough specific impulse in that time to significantly change the position of the body?

For the record if he was standing and someone accidentally managed to get a close patern at distance that would be quite a fluke because wouldnt the gun itself be in motion during that cycle? My understanding is that the 3 shot burst mode exists to maximise the chance that one of the bullets hits something during a hastily fired burst. To get 3 hits unaimed would be doing well to get 3 in a small pattern...

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 9:55 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"Can the muscles generate enough specific impulse in that time to significantly change the position of the body?"

Absolutely. If you have ever seen someone having a grand mal seizure, generally the first thing they do is jerk violently in a body-wide motion (then fall over and go through large unmodulated contraction-relaxation cycles. It's that overuse of muscles that causes the person to be sore afterwards.)

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 12:38 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Time for neurological response (reflex) is .3 seconds, time per round is 0.25 seconds. I can see how one could have two rounds close together (before the body jerks and the head goes back), but not three.

Nope. What I said was that all three round would hit within .25 seconds (Or that's what I meant, if it wasn't clear first time around). Rechecking my calculations for the 800 round-per-minute cyclic rate of am M16, the time between the impact of the first and third rounds would actually be .15 seconds.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 1:24 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Then it's still possible for reflex to cause body-movement in that time. My calculations were based on intentional reaction time - looking into it a patellar reflex happens within 100milliseconds (or 0.1 seconds).

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 3:13 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
They did say "Shock and Awe." Doesn't that sound kind of quick and easy? "Mission accomplished." Doesn't that sound kind of like it was smooth sailing and we're all done? Is there another meaning to "mission accomplished" that I've missed?

I’m not saying that the administration didn’t try to make their own case, what I’m saying is that people hear what they want to hear. The speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln is an excellent example of exactly what I’m talking about. People who didn’t agree with the war or the administration didn’t even hear the speech, even if they listened to it; all they saw was the moral boosting “Mission Accomplished” banner put up by the Navy - nothing else got through.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 3:30 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

How about "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" ?

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It's the quagmire mop-up that'll kill you.

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 3:39 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
How about "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" ?

“Major combat operations” had ended, from then on the war has focused mostly on smaller scale operations to combat the insurgency, and there was probably a bit of wishful thinking added in for good measure, but the statement is not hard to figure out.

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 3:40 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

If major combat operations have ended, why are troop levels still at max?

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major combat : max troops levels :: minor combat : ____________

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 4:01 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Because troop levels don’t necessarily have anything to do with “major operations,” but probably mostly because of wishful thinking.

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 4:10 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

You mean it was wishful thinking to say major operations were over ?
:head with question marks over it:
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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 4:51 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Then it's still possible for reflex to cause body-movement in that time. My calculations were based on intentional reaction time - looking into it a patellar reflex happens within 100milliseconds (or 0.1 seconds).

Even assuming that the reaction to getting shot in the head is as quick as pattelar reflex (which requires only neurons firing between the patella tendon and it's attached muscle, without impulses even reaching the brain), two rounds would hit within .075 seconds. If Tillman reacted to the first round, he wouldn't have even started to move when the second round got there, and if he started at 0.1 seconds, would have at best been moving for .05 seconds before the third round hit him. How far do you think you can move your head in five hundreths of a second?

I'm afraid that you're reaching pretty far to try and make this something other than an accident.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007 5:00 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

A person can catch a dropping object in 0.3 seconds. A hard-wired reflex is 3x faster. I don't know, you tell me - if you can move fast enough to intentionally catch a dropping object, can you reflexively move fast enough to alter position a few inches ?

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Wednesday, October 3, 2007 3:49 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I think the thing that points against Pat Tillman being "triple checked" is the lack of powder burns. (I'm assuming that since the MEs were competent enuf to notice the tight grouping and honest enuf to point it out, they'd be competent enuf to check for powder burns.) So back to square one IMHO- we know everything except what actually happened. Too bad all evidence was destroyed. That makes polygraphing the platoon the only way to further the investigation.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Wednesday, October 3, 2007 4:41 AM

MAL4PREZ

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I’m not saying that the administration didn’t try to make their own case...

And that includes flat out lying? Lying about Tillman? Lying about evidence of WMDs? Lying about how the fight has been going? This is the American way, to lie about every damned thing?

OK, whatever. Clearly, we won't be agreeing on anything except that people do indeed hear what they want to hear...

I'll stop with the thread hijacking and get back on topic. As I understand it, human reaction time isn't so much an issue because the 3 rounds would have been fired in a burst - single trigger pull. Right?

Anyhow, doesn't it seem like rather a coindence that all three shots of "accidental fire" - which must have happened at enough distance for the shooter to not recognize Tillman - hit his forehead? How likely is that?

I don't know, this is hard to argue when we don't know the facts and the evidence has been destroyed. It just can't amount to more than a bunch of hand-waving.

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