Your point about Pat Tillman is spot on. He died for his country. The white-washed report designed for public consumption did not detail the circumstances of the man’s death in part at least so his family, his fans and the country could accept his death as heroic, which it was, and not as a tragedy. His willingness to serve in combat is all that we, the public, need to know, although the commanders have to consider the tactics, weapons, rules of engagement, and so forth, in light of this risk of casualties due to friendly fire and everything else that is simultaneously involved.
A note accompanied the report that the president should avoid becoming personally involved with it or embellishing upon it, so as to protect the president from any misstatement. But, I suppose it was inevitable that the details would eventually become known because of the public interest in the man.
With regard to General McChrystal, he seems to have a history of incidents like this, along with a record of enormous accomplishment. This country sent him to war with very limited resources, in terms of men under arms, and expected him to use our superiority in technology and special operations tactics to accomplish missions such as help overthrown the Talliban in Afghanistan, defeat Hussein in Iraq, hunt down various members of the deposed regime, Al Qaida, operatives from Iran, and criminal gangs, and reconstruct Afghanistan (as though it had ever been constructed in the first place).
With a relatively small army, much of which was exempt from actual combat with the enemy, and heavily-burdened with rules of engagement, he was expected to wind up our involvement in Afghanistan on a politically-determined timetable. He wasn’t able to pull it off. And, I don’t think anybody could have. His successor has much more credibility and is actually is in a good position to bargain for the resources, time and freedom of command needed to win.