If you’ve followed my blogging for the past two months, you know I’ve developed something of an obsession with the Jessica Lynch story. Not with the 19-year-old soldier herself, mind you (I’m sure she’s a lovely girl, but she’s just not my type — and, having evaluated her brother’s chamber-pot haircut on the evening news, I wouldn’t want to marry into the family). No, my interest is in the continually-morphing story of how Miss Teen American Rambo-ette gunned her way through hordes of evil Iraqis, and was shot, stabbed, and received two or three (or maybe more) broken arms, legs, etc., before being taken prisoner, and held in an Iraqi hospital, where she was slapped, tortured, and denied decent medical care — and then finally starred in a daring, captured-on-video, midnight-rescue raid by U.S. Special Ops forces.
Now, I naturally have my doubts about a lot of “facts” as reported in the American media, but — believe it or not — I’ve going to reign in much of my own skepticism here. I’m simply going to re-tell the tale of Jessica Lynch through nothing more than excerpts from scores of widely-reported news stories.
Why am I re-hashing yesterday’s news? I’m not: The Lynch saga is very much back in the news, thanks to a damning BBC documentary that blasts both the Pentagon’s “official” version of the story, and the numerous, contradictory media reports.
I know what I think about the tale of Private Robo-Teen — but I’m going to let you make up your own mind.
And I can’t be accused of tapping only the (harumph!) “liberal-biased media” — you’ll find such bastions of right-wing spin as Fox News, CNN, the Washington Times, and the Washington Post here, as well as right-leaning MSNBC, and the generally even-handed Reuters, et al.
Contents:
- Prologue: Casting Doubt
- The Wrong Turn
- Robo-Teen
- Follow the Bouncing Wounds
- At the Hospital
- Before the Raid
- Saving Private Lynch
- Aftermath
- Conflicting Viewpoints
- Misty Water-Colored Memories
- Hello, Central Casting…?
- And Get Me Jayson Blair for the Rewrites!
- Lights… Camera…!
- Just Rewards?
- The Iraqi “Hero’s” Payoff
- Questions Left Unanswered
- Bitter Endings
- In Perspective
- Rare Moments of Media Self-Reflection
- One Last, Odd Note
1. Prologue: Casting Doubt
In the 1998 film “Wag the Dog,” political operatives employ special editing techniques to create phony footage that will engender public sympathy for a manufactured war. Now we find that in 2003 the real-life Pentagon’s ability and willingness to manipulate the facts make Hollywood’s story lines look tame.
After a thorough investigation, the British Broadcasting Corp. has presented a shocking dissection of the “heroic” rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch, as reported by the U.S. military and breathless American media.
Jessica Lynch — an all American icon of the war. Captured by the Iraqis. Saved for the nation in a daring helicopter rescue.
This was a script made for Hollywood. Made by the Pentagon.
Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict.
But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.
…[which is] the polite British way of saying “liar, liar, pants on fire.”
2. The Wrong Turn
US officials say a convoy of vehicles from the 507th took a wrong turn Sunday…
The soldier, Pfc. Jessica Lynch, 19, of Palestine, W.Va., was part of the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company ambushed in Nasiriya on March 23 after the military convoy she was in took a wrong turn in the dark off a highway en route to an antiaircraft battery in southern Iraq.
Soldiers with the 507th Maintenance Company from Fort Bliss did not take a wrong turn in the early morning of March 23 when their convoy was ambushed by Iraqi soldiers near Nasiriyah, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said Thursday.
Reyes, who spoke to three wounded soldiers, including two staff sergeants, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, said they told him they were ambushed on a bridge as they were attempting to catch up to a huge convoy of tanks and troops moving north to Baghdad. They had fallen behind because they had to repair several stalled vehicles.
3. Robo-Teen
A band of paramilitary Iraqis attacked the truck convoy from all sides. One survivor said the unit immediately descended into chaos and that some of the soldiers’ guns jammed.
Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army’s 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said.
“She was fighting to the death,” the official said. “She did not want to be taken alive.”
Pfc. Jessica Lynch shifted overnight from victim to teenage Rambo: all the cable news shows ran with a report from The Washington Post that the 19-year-old P.O.W. had been shot and stabbed yet still kept firing at enemy soldiers. In the hands of television, the story had instantly gelled into a heroic made-for-TV war movie, “Saving Meg Ryan.” Later yesterday, her father said she had not been shot or stabbed in the ambush of her unit.
Pamela Nicolais, a cousin of Private Lynch, said that a military official told the family that she had ”limped to a hospital in Iraq” after her unit was ambushed, and had been turned over to Iraqi forces.
The Jessica Lynch story was not all it seemed.
John Kampfner
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
4. Follow the Bouncing Wounds
She [Pfc. Jessica Lynch] was said to be doing well, but CNN reported that Lynch had suffered had suffered multiple gunshot wounds at some point during her ordeal in Iraq that made it hard to move her.
Reuters
April 1, 2003
Her condition was not disclosed, but U.S. officials in Kuwait said she was believed to have broken legs, a broken arm and at least one gunshot wound.
Associated Press
April 2, 2003
Lynch also was stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position, the official said, noting that initial intelligence reports indicated she had been stabbed to death. No official gave any indication Wednesday, however, that Lynch’s wounds had been life-threatening.
Lynch… sustained multiple gunshot wounds… Lynch was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position, the official said, noting that initial intelligence reports indicated that she had been stabbed to death. …
She was in “stable” condition, with broken arms and a broken leg in addition to the gunshot and stab wounds, sources said. Other sources said both legs were broken, and one arm. …
The only injuries the pharmacist said he was aware of were to Lynch’s leg, but there was no way to evaluate his statement.
A U.S. commando team whose name remains secret rescued Lynch early Wednesday. She underwent surgery at a military hospital in Germany and was scheduled for more, her parents said yesterday. Her father said doctors had found no evidence of gunshot or stab wounds.
The 19-year-old Army supply clerk was undergoing surgery yesterday at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for a fractured disc, two broken legs and a broken arm.
New York Post
April 4, 2003
Since her rescue, Lynch has been flown to U.S. Ramstein air base in Germany and has undergone back surgery. Her parents in West Virginia said she has two broken legs and a broken right forearm.
Lynch’s family has said doctors had determined she’d been shot. They found two entry and exit wounds “consistent with low-velocity, small-caliber rounds,” her mother has said.
“There was never a bullet wound,” said al-Houssona, who operated on Lynch to install a metal plate in her leg. “It’s a myth if [someone said] there was.”
[Said Dr Harith a-Houssona:] “They want to distort the picture. I don’t know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury.”
A medical checkup by U.S. doctors confirmed the account of the Iraqi doctors, who said they had carefully tended her injuries, a broken arm and thigh and a dislocated ankle, in contrast to U.S. media reports that doctors had ignored Lynch.
[The commander of the military hospital in Germany] also said she had been neither shot nor stabbed. …
But none of those stories got the play of the first, and none of them specifically said, “Look, folks, we’re not so sure anymore.”
5. At the Hospital
We all became friends with her, we liked her so much,” [Dr. ] Houssona said. “Especially because we all speak a little English, we were able to assure her the whole time that there was no danger, that she would go home soon.” …
[T]hey all made a point of giving Lynch the best of everything, [Raazk] added. Despite a scarcity of food, extra juice and cookie were scavenged for their American guest.
Despite her nationality, lack of supplies and the chaos of treating dozens of Iraqi wounded, hospital workers were proud of how they treated Lynch as a “guest” rather than a war prisoner. They said the staff donated two of the three pints of blood she received.
We give her three bottles of blood… two of them from medical staff… because there is no blood at this time.
Dr Harith Al-Houssona
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
After awakening two days later, Lynch was cared for by two nurses in round-the-clock shifts.
Iraqi doctors in Nasiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for the soldier in the midst of war. She was assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital and one of only two nurses on the floor.
They also assigned to Lynch the hospital’s most nurturing nurse, Khalida Shinah. At 43, Shinah has three daughters close to Lynch’s age. She immediately embraced her foreign patient as one of her own.
[Said Houssona:] “And she really bonded with Khalida. She told me, ‘I’m going to take her back to America with me.’” …
Private Lynch’s military guards would allow no other doctor to tend to her and Dr Harith formed a friendship with her. She talked to him about her family, including her arguments about money with her father, and about her boyfriend, a Hispanic soldier named Ruben.
Ramona Lynch, whose husband was Lynch’s third cousin, said she suspects that the surgeries on Lynch’s legs may have been necessary because the bones were knitting together improperly.
“She laid there for eight days before they rescued her,” Ramona Lynch said at her home on Lynn Camp Road near Palestine. “They may have had to break them and reset them.”
[Lynch’s cousin, Pam Nicolais] isn’t so sure.
“The doctors and nurses over there (in Iraq), and this is from Greg Sr., were very good to her,” she said. “Whether they did anything to her, I don’t know. That stuff isn’t important to me. Her well-being is what matters now.”
6. Before the Raid
Briefing reporters at Central Command headquarters, Brooks said the hospital apparently was being used as a military command post.
Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.
The question is, did the army know beforehand that there were no hostile forces at the hospital where Lynch was kept? As it turns out, of course, there weren’t, so who were the soldiers firing at? Was there any resistance at all? Since the army has already shredded their credibility by lying about Lynch’s “gunshot wounds,” these are reasonable questions to ask.
“The most important thing to know is that the Iraqi soldiers and commanders had left the hospital almost two days earlier,” [Dr. Harith] Houssona said.
John Kampfner: The doctors told us that the day before the Special Forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Did the Americans know this? We found a man who saw an advance party land in the town. He says he was questioned by the team’s translator.”
Hassam Hamoud: “He said; ‘where is Saddam Hospital?’ I said, ‘in that direction’. He said; ‘are there any Fedayeen over there?’ I said; ‘no, there aren’t any, there is no forces in there or anything.’”
John Kampfner: “All the same America’s finest warriors descended on the building.”
Watching it all from a safe distance near his house was Hamoud, the hospital neighbor, who said an interpreter with the landing U.S. commandos approached him and asked if there were Iraqi fighters inside the hospital. Hamoud said there were not.
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, [Dr Harith a-Houssona] had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance.
Every time, ‘I want to go home, I want to go home.’ We told her, I secretly between us, I and she, I told her… I will try to escape you to the American Army… but I will do this very secretly because I lose my life.”
Dr Harith Al-Houssona
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
[Said Dr. Houssona:] “The night [the Iraqi soldiers and commanders] left, a few of the senior medical staff tried to give Jessica back. We carefully moved her out of intensive care and into an ambulance and began to drive to the Americans, who were just one kilometre away.”
Ultimately, Lynch was loaded into an ambulance and driven off by Sabah Khazaal, a hospital driver, and an Iraqi officer, the staff said. Soon afterward, at an Iraqi army checkpoint, another Iraqi gave the officer a gun and told him to shoot Lynch, but the officer refused, saying that was against Muslim belief, according to Khazaal.
Farther up the road, Khazaal said, the ambulance approached a U.S. Army checkpoint. The driver slowed down and turned on his ambulance lights, but then he heard gunfire, which he assumed was coming from the checkpoint, so he quickly turned around and returned to the hospital.
The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.
“We told him go to the American checkpoint…”
Dr Harith Al-Houssona
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
“But when the ambulance got within 300 metres, they began to shoot. There wasn’t even a chance to tell them ‘We have Jessica. Take her.’” …
That night, another driver, Abdul-Hadi Hannoon, said he told Lynch he would drive her to the U.S. checkpoint in the morning.
About an hour later, just around midnight, the staff heard an explosion that knocked out the hospital’s power. The rescue mission had begun.
7. Saving Private Lynch
You’ve seen the footage on the news: a U.S. special forces team bursts into an Iraqi hospital to snatch the cute blonde soldier from the jaws of the enemy. The whole Hollywood moment was recorded by night-vision cameras.
Lynch’s April 1 rescue came at a critical time. Field commanders were expressing surprise at the Iraqi resistance, and Lynch went missing during one of the ambushes that gave the impression that the U.S. advance was bogging down. That day’s newspaper front pages featured a disturbing story of how U.S. soldiers wiped out an entire Iraqi family at a road checkpoint.
With Jessica’s life in peril a snatch squad was sent in to take her from her hospital bed in Nasariyah. They took fire on their way in and out of the building, a military video team capturing every step in the action.
John Kampfner
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
Lynch’s rescue at midnight local time Tuesday was a classic Special Operations raid, with U.S. commandos in Black Hawk helicopters engaging Iraqi forces on their way in and out of the medical compound, defense officials said.
Acting on information from CIA operatives, they said, a Special Operations force of Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Air Force combat controllers touched down in blacked-out conditions. An AC-130 gunship, able to fire 1,800 rounds a minute from its 25mm cannon, circled overhead, as did a reconnaissance aircraft providing video imagery of the operation as it unfolded.
As helicopters carrying the Special Ops forces landed outside the hospital, Predator drones circled overhead, sending pictures back to intelligence officers, who briefed commanders in the supersecure Joint Operations Center. One detachment of Marines made a diversionary attack on another part of the city, while the main force landed at the hospital and began searching for Lynch. …
She was hiding in her bed just after midnight when the Special Ops team found her, in a room on the first floor of Saddam (naturally) Hospital in An Nasiriya. A soldier called her name, and without answering she peeked out from under the sheets. “Jessica Lynch,” he called, “we’re United States soldiers and we’re here to protect you and take you home.” The American approached the bed and took his helmet off and she looked up at him and replied: “I’m an American soldier, too.”
“Jessica held up her hand and grabbed the Ranger doctor’s hand, and held onto it for the entire time, and said, ‘Please don’t let anybody leave me,”‘ Renuart said. “It was clear she knew where she was and didn’t want to be left anywhere near the enemy.”
When they found her, she “seemed to be in a fair amount of pain,” officials later recounted, and she was strapped to a stretcher to be carried down a flight of steps and outside to a helicopter. As her chopper took off, she grabbed the hand of the Army doctor and pleaded, “Don’t let anybody leave me.”
Lynch was rescued, with the operation — or at least parts of it — caught by soldiers using a night vision camera. Last month, Pentagon officials gave the impression that the raid was carried out against potentially dangerous resistance.
But reports have emerged that the raid may have been unnecessary because there was no resistance at the hospital. … U.S. troops burst into the hospital, doctors said, adding that they could simply have walked in with no problem because there were no Iraqi guards left.
Turns out… there was no one there but doctors and patients…
“We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital,” said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital. “It was like a Hollywood film. They cried ‘go, go, go’, with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital — action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan.”
Having fled to an X-ray room, the hospital doctors said they could not see much but heard explosions, likely the sound of plastic explosives blowing the locks off doors. They said they also thought they heard shooting but afterwards found no evidence of bullet holes.
Separately, the Iraqi doctors describe how the tension fell away rapidly once the Americans realized no threat existed on the premises. A U.S. medic was led to Lynch’s room as others secured the rest of the three-wing hospital.
But the Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to this bed frame.
John Kampfner
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
Several staff and patients were placed in plastic handcuffs, including, according to Houssona, one Iraqi civilian who was already immobilized with abdominal wounds from an earlier explosion. …
Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime.
“The whole thing lasted about four hours,” [Dr. Mudhafer] Raazk said. “When they left, they turned to us and said `Thank you.’ That was it.”
The “rescue mission” amounted to a shock and awe campaign against a bunch of frightened doctors and nurses who were taking care of Lynch.
“They made a big show,” said Haitham Gizzy, a physician at the public hospital here who treated Lynch for her injuries. “It was just a drama,” he said. “A big, dramatic show.”
Commandos whisked Lynch to the Black Hawk helicopter that had landed inside the hospital compound, he said, while others remained behind to clear the hospital.
Just after midnight on April 2, Central Command officials summoned journalists back to the base and, after a several-hour wait, informed them about the first successful rescue mission of an American POW since World War II.
In an April 2 briefing, Central Command spokesman Gen. Vincent Brooks… showed dramatic film and still pictures of the raid. In one photograph, Lynch is shown aboard a U.S. helicopter with a folded American flag on her chest.
General Vincent Brooks: “It was a classic joint operation, done by some of our nation’s finest warriors who are dedicated to never leaving a comrade behind. At this point she is safe. She’s been retrieved. I asked her who was holding her — the regime was holding her.”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “We are certainly grateful for the brilliant and courageous rescue of Sergeant, correction PFC Jessica Lynch who was being held by Iraqi forces in, in what they called a hospital.”
John Kampfner: “Two weeks ago we visited the scene of Jessica’s rescue. Although Iraqi forces had occupied part of it, this was a hospital like any other.”
8. Aftermath
The Iraqi medical staff fanned out to assess the damage. In all, 12 doors were broken, a sterilized operating theatre contaminated, and the specialized traction bed in which Lynch had been placed was trashed.
“That was a special bed, the only one like it in the hospital, but we gave it to Jessica because she was developing a bed sore.” …
Bizarrely, the rescuers cut open a special bed, designed for patients with bed sores, which had been provided for Private Lynch’s use.
“They took samples of sand out of it,” Dr Harith said. “It was the only bed like it that we have, the only one in the governorate.”
Today, the hospital struggles on without adequate supplies of drugs and without running water or mains electricity.
Back at the hospital, the doctors, nurses and drivers have not seen the dramatic reports about how Lynch was saved. They just wish for some acknowledgment of how they helped her.
“Just a thank you,” said Hannoon, the second ambulance driver. “That would make us very happy.”
Three days after the raid, the doctors had a visit from one of their U.S. military counterparts. He came, they say, to thank them for the superb surgery.
“He was an older doctor with gray hair and he wore a military uniform,” Raazk said.
“I told him he was very welcome, that it was our pleasure. And then I told him: `You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don’t you?’
“He was shocked when I told him the real story. That’s when I realized this rescue probably didn’t happen for propaganda reasons. I think this American army is just such a huge machine, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing.”
9. Conflicting Viewpoints
Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed.
What’s Washington going to do when it finds out that our national broadcaster has aired a documentary that makes the current war-mad regime look like a bunch of ham-fisted liars? Will the U.S. close the borders altogether, instead of just slowing them down? Will we have to endure iris-scans just to pop over the line for a carton of smokes? Or maybe they’ll refuse to sell CTV the next season of American Idol. Now, that would hurt.
War Spin: The Truth About Jessica… (which should have been called Saving Private Lyin’) is from the BBC, which doesn’t, apparently, act as a government house organ either.
Why the kerfuffle? Because veteran reporter John Kampfner shows us that the recent “rescue” of Private Jessica Lynch from Iraq was actually a bunch of bollocks.
Defense officials said on Friday the Pentagon was insulted by media claims the rescue of Jessica Lynch in Iraq was hyped to boost support for the war as questions swirled over the private’s capture, her rescue and injuries. … Pentagon spokesman Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said it was “ludicrous and insulting” for the BBC to suggest the rescue was staged and hyped up.
“In our film, the British military spokesman, who figured very much in BBC, CNN and all the international broadcasters’ coverage of the war, told us on camera that he was deeply unhappy with the American media handling,” [BBC’s John] Kampfner said. “And he said to us, ‘There were two different styles of media management, there was the American one and the British one, and I was pleased to be part of the British one.’ And that, to me, that’s a pretty damning indictment.”
Maybe the Pentagon hyped the Lynch story. Maybe in the confusion of the rescue, some honest people in the Pentagon just got things wrong.
Experts in war propaganda say the official tale fit all too nicely into the neat story line the Bush administration wanted to push and the American public wanted to hear at a time when the war did not appear to be going very well.
HARRIS: Is it your belief right now based upon your investigation that this rescue of Lynch was in any way a staged event and not real?
KAMPFNER: No. First things first. Credit where it is due. The Americans had a legitimate right in getting Lynch out of the hospital in Nasiriya. They had no way of knowing what her fate was, whether she was being well or badly treated.
So, it is entirely legitimate for any country to want to get its own out as quickly and as safely as possible.
Where we took issue with the official version as put out by Central Command, in Doha, [Qatar], to the world’s press, was the way the Americans did it. They went in, all guns blazing, helicopters, a great, heroic rescue mission.
The contention of the Iraqi doctors we spoke to was, well, actually they didn’t need to do that, they could have come and got her. And in fact, one of the doctors said the day before the Americans conducted this very elaborate rescue mission, they had actually tried to get Lynch to the Americans, by putting her in an ambulance, taking her to the front line. In the course of that journey, according to the doctors, that ambulance came under fire from American forces, and they had to take her back to the hospital.
The story of Jessica Lynch is the tale of how a modern war icon is made, and perhaps how easily officials and journalists with different agendas accepted contradictory, self-serving versions of what happened to her.
Claims about escapes or rescues are often a red flag. There were only 28 escapes throughout the entire Vietnam War and that number included some civilians, [said Mary Schantag, co-founder and researcher for the POW Network].
“There were no planned successful rescues since WWII until Jessica Lynch,” she said, referring to the 19-year-old Army supply clerk rescued during the recent war in Iraq.
Schantag said the public needs to be aware of the problem and exercise some skepticism, especially schools and veterans organizations. The VFW is beginning to require prospective members to agree to searches of their military records, she said.
“People need to do their homework before they get somebody to speak, especially when [the tale] is too good to be true,” she said.
Though the Bush administration’s shamelessly trumped-up claims about Iraq’s alleged ties to al-Qaida and 9-11 and its weapons of mass destruction take the cake for deceitful propaganda — grand strategic lies that allow the United States’ seizure of Iraq’s oil to appear to be an act of liberation — the sad case of Lynch’s exploitation at the hands of military spinners illustrates that the truth once again was a casualty of war.
Lynch… has suffered enough in the line of duty without being reduced to a propaganda pawn.
It was a great yarn the White House spun until it became apparent that the poor girl had been injured in a highway accident, hadn’t fired a shot, and had not been shot, stabbed or tortured.
[Longtime peace activist Cindy Litman] said she believed the Bush administration’s “desperate attempt” to generate positive publicity — she counted what she said was the hyping of the story of the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, something the Pentagon denied Friday — is proof that the anti-war movement made its mark. And, she said, history might yet show that the United States fought the war differently because of international scrutiny.
10. Misty Water-Colored Memories
Rescued POW Jessica Lynch (search) says she can’t remember anything about her time in captivity in Iraq — a huge obstacle for military investigators who were hoping the 19-year-old soldier would be the key to revealing Iraqi war crimes…
Military officials have said that Lynch’s last memory of the attack after which she was captured is a rocket-propelled grenade hitting the vehicle she was riding in. …
[S]he has “no memory whatsoever of any of the events from the time her convoy came under attack until she woke up” in an Iraqi hospital, said [Dr. Greg] Argyros, assistant chief for the Department of Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and head of the team handling Lynch’s care.
[Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld] said Lynch is likely suffering from something called total global amnesia, which often occurs after someone endures a traumatic emotional and/or physical stress.
Sources Say Jessica Lynch Has AmnesiaFox News
May 4, 2003
[Dr. Argyros] said it’s not a case of amnesia, which he defined as forgetting something you once knew. Rather, Lynch simply has no memory of the ambush March 23 that resulted in her capture.
Asked if Lynch would eventually remember details of her ordeal, Rosenfeld said: “I would expect that she would, yes.”
It’s unlikely that Pfc. Jessica Lynch will ever remember what happened in Iraq when her Army convoy was ambushed and she was taken as a prisoner of war, her doctor said Thursday.
“These things usually take months — sometimes years — but usually months to eventually clear up,” and the patient recovers, Rosenfeld said.
Asked if she will ever remember, Argyros said there’s only a small chance.
The military has had Lynch talking to psychiatrists but they may soon bring in additional people, including others from her military unit who survived the ambush, to help refresh her memory. They say she “has to be brought back to reality,” since she may be the last living witness to war crimes in Iraq against those U.S. soldiers.
“It appears after the evaluations that we have done thus far, that there’s a chance in the future that she may,” [Dr. Argyros] said. “But the likelihood is very low that she will remember any of the events from the time of the attack until the time she woke up in the Iraqi hospital.”
One Army official said that it could be some time before Lynch is reunited with her family, since experience with those taken prisoner since the Vietnam War indicates that soldiers held in captivity need time to “decompress” and reflect on their ordeal with the help of medical professionals.
Soldiers from Jessica’s El Paso, Texas-based 507th Maintenance Company have been warned not to talk. A soldier in that unit said, “It’s almost ’say a word and you’ll be shot at dawn.’”
Jessica has been locked up in a private Walter Reed hospital room with an around-the-clock security detail normally reserved for high brass to ensure that what happened to her as a prisoner of war remains inside her room. Medical personnel who look after her have been given the same keep-your-trap-shut treatment as the 507th troopers. Almost daily her cover story changes from amnesia to partial amnesia to more recently: “She’s blocked just the ambush event.” …
[S]ooner or later, the truth will be told about Jessica and her 507th comrades-in-misfortune. …
11. Hello, Central Casting…?
One could have easily gotten the impression last week that the war in Iraq is being fought to liberate pretty young American girls from Iraqi hospitals.
After a week of news of Iraqis strenuously resisting U.S. efforts to liberate them, the American campaign badly needed something to make war feel good again in the homeland.
The rescue of Jessica Lynch proved just the thing. The cute 19-year-old private, who had enlisted in the army so she could get a college education and become a kindergarten teacher when she grows up, instantly became the human face of the U.S. war effort.
“Talk about spunk!” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), whom military officials had briefed on the rescue. “She just persevered. It takes that and a tremendous faith that your country is going to come and get you.”
By focusing on the angel-faced, kindergarten-teacher-in-training, we easily forget Jessica is just a tiny cog in the massive U.S. war machine currently invading Iraq, with the stated goal of installing a former American general as military governor. (Not even the White House bothers any longer to pretend this war is about “disarming” Iraq — the goal that Washington put forward for months in trying to line up U.N. support.) Could imperial ambition be any plainer?
“They had another celebration at the courthouse, a praise service — that she was alive,” said Mrs. Johnson. “They’re very grateful to God and to America for caring so much about their little country girl.” … [Clarence Gant, friend of the Lynch family, said:] “God dispatches angels to be around people like her.” … “After we all arrive home, we’re all planning on one heck of a shindig,” Greg Lynch, Jessica’s father told the Parkersburg News. “We love her and the little brat’s caused a big stir in this county.”
With the Jessica story front and centre, the most lethal war machine ever assembled in history could be presented as fresh-faced, innocent and eager to please. Suddenly the war campaign no longer seemed to be about dropping bombs (8,700 in 12 days) relentlessly on a city of 5 million people, or killing unarmed women and children in Baghdad markets or at army checkpoints; it was about saving sweet, young co-eds from the Iraqi hordes (or, at least, from inferior Iraqi medical treatment.)
“Jessi’s face shows the kind of character she has — loving, caring,” [Lynch’s cousin, Pam Nicolais] said. “People from all over the world have told me that there is something about her face, that the Lord spoke to them and that she was going to be OK.”
“She got to talk on the phone to her grandparents and some of her cousins back home,” says family spokesperson Pam Nicolais. Nicolais talked to Lynch herself last Friday night.
“She was in such a good mood,” Nicolais says. “She finally got her hair done.”
12. And Get Me Jayson Blair for the Rewrites!
We all know now of Jayson Blair, the former New York Times reporter and world-class liar. But what is perhaps most troubling about the Blair affair was the fact, reported by the Los Angeles Times, that many of the people Blair misquoted or lied about interviewing never bothered to complain. They either thought it would do no good or, worse, considered their woeful experience with the press to be routine.
[Jayson] Blair is the young African-American New York Times reporter whose series of remarkable scoops on a variety of high-profile stories aroused enough curiosity that the Washington Post investigated, discovering that Blair was plagiarizing or simply inventing entire stories on events as high-profile and disparate as the D.C. sniper and former POW Jessica Lynch. …
Even today, Linda Davies was still clutching the note that Pfc. Jessica Lynch, her former kindergarten student, sent six weeks ago from the desert of Kuwait, set out on pastel paper in a schoolgirl’s round handwriting and marveling at how far she had come from her home in rural West Virginia.
“I can say I’ve been to places that half of Wirt County will never see,” Private Lynch, 19, wrote with the wonder and awe of a country girl who had not visited Charleston, the state capital, until she graduated from high school but had now embarked on what she plainly saw as a great adventure.
[Jayson Blair] pretended to go where he had not gone, made up quotes, used quotes other reporters had gathered as if they were his own, submitted false expense reports and lifted whole sections of copy produced by other reporters, submitting them as his own work.
Outside the Lynch family’s tin-roofed, white wood-frame home at the end of a single-lane gravel road, Private Lynch’s father, Gregory Lynch Sr., 43, a self-employed truck driver in heavy boots and blue jeans, put it a different way.
“What she has learned growing up in the country and woods, and by what her brother put her through, that kind of prepared her for a lot,” Mr. Lynch said.
According to the New York Observer, Blair says he “couldn’t stop laughing” when The New York Times published a correction of a scene Blair wrote for the newspaper that had Jessica Lynch’s father standing on the porch of his house looking out over nonexistent “tobacco fields and cattle pastures.”
“That’s my favorite, just because the description was so far off from the reality,” Blair was quoted. “And the way they described it in The Times story — someone read a portion of it to me — I couldn’t stop laughing.”
[Jayson Blair] seemed to take pride in how he concocted details of the Palestine, W.Va., hometown of captured soldier Jessica Lynch. He wrote that Lynch’s father stared at a tobacco field from his front porch, and that the father fought back the tears.
Never happened.
Blair never even went to the town, although the story was supposedly written from there.
He laughed about it, writer Sridhar Pappu said.
I gagged.
A father didn’t know if his daughter would live, and a writer just made up a story, and now he thinks it’s funny.
“She kept saying that this is what New York City must be like,” said Glenda Nelson, a family friend who took Private Lynch on her first visit to Charleston for a shopping trip, just before she left for her Army post at Fort Bliss, Tex.
The two spent several hours shopping for clothes and other items Private Lynch needed, and Ms. Nelson said the young woman was much impressed by the lights and buildings in the state capital, a city of about [55,000].
“She is nothing but a wholesome West Virginia country girl,” Ms. Nelson said. “I told her that she needed to get out and see some of the world. I didn’t mean Iraq.”
[A] BBC (not American) investigation this month revealed that the entire Jessica Lynch story, from beginning to end, was an elaborately planned hoax perpetrated by the Pentagon and the Bush Administration. The pinnacle was a Hollywood-worthy spectacle of Lynch’s Special Forces “rescuers” charging into her Iraqi hospital, shooting blanks and shouting as though an enemy were returning fire. There was no enemy — only Pentagon cameras, which captured and carefully edited the footage to create a heroic and entirely fictitious “rescue” story that dominated American newscasts and headlines for days. That bit of fiction makes anything [discredited New York Times reporter Jayson] Blair did look even more like child’s play.
Lynch, ironically, was one of the assignments Blair faked — describing (from photographs) a trip to her West Virginia home when he never left the city.
This afternoon, Mr. Nelson said the ordeal just re-emphasized the power of community, prayer and what a special woman Private Lynch is. “She was smart and gentle, a good country girl,” he said. “I think the reason she survived through this is that she is a true angel and God knows that he wants her with us for some more time.”
“I hope to God that the whole country does not forget about what a special hero we have in Jessi Lynch,” Mr. Nelson added, making clear that he had in mind some antiwar protesters who he believes have been too hard on the soldiers fighting in Iraq.
Hotels in the vicinity of Palestine, W.Va., had no record of [New York Times reporter Jayson Blair]. His co-writer, as well as a photographer who was stationed at the Lynch home for The Times, said they did not see Mr. Blair. Mr. Blair gave his editors and his co-writer a number where he could be reached on April 2, the day the article was written. The number belonged to Glenda and Donald Nelson, friends of the Lynch family; the Nelsons said that they never met or spoke to Mr. Blair. The Nelsons live in Marmet, W.Va., about a two-hour drive from Palestine.
At Wirt County High School this morning, in Elizabeth, the county seat, the 300 students gathered in a packed auditorium to sing songs like “God Bless America” in honor not just of Private Lynch but also of other soldiers, some of them the brothers and cousins of students. …
[Rodney Watson, the high school softball coach] remembers Private Lynch as the feisty right fielder who played for four years on his team. “Being scrappy probably helped her get through this thing,” Mr. Watson said.
Journalism is alchemy with words. We turn nuances, lies, denials, spin and unreturned phone calls into something called The Truth. Often we succeed. When we don’t, we don’t want anyone to notice. We would like to appear omniscient. Who will read us if we are constantly expressing doubt?
But the public is on to us.
13. Lights… Camera…!
Mitchell Catlin: “Private Ryan will be treated in Germany after being in the hands of the Iraqi regime for ten days.”
John Kampfner: “Did he say Private Ryan?”
Dr. Mudhafer Raazk, 27, observed dryly that two cameramen and a still photographer, also in uniform, accompanied the U.S. teams into the hospital. Maybe this was a movie after all.
When footage of the rescue was released, General Vincent Brooks, US spokesman in Doha, said: “Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen, loyal to a creed that they know that they’ll never leave a fallen comrade.”
The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves.
We asked the Pentagon to release the full videotape of the rescue rather than its five-minute edited version to clear up any discrepancies. It declined.
John Kampfner
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
[A]ll of this could be completely put to rest if the army simply released the raw tape of the entire rescue, not just the highly edited 5-minute version that was given to the press. But they won’t.
It’s unlikely to the point of absurdity that releasing the raw tape would divulge any important secrets of operational security, so the only plausible reason for witholding it is that it would embarrass them. Bottom line: the army can put this issue to rest any time they want, so they should stop complaining about the BBC’s coverage until they do. What are they afraid of?
The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer.
Bruckheimer advised the Pentagon on the primetime television series “Profiles from the Front Line”, that followed US forces in Afghanistan in 2001. That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.
Hollywood and the Pentagon working in perfect symmetry. In 2001 the man behind ‘Black Hawk Down’, Jerry Bruckheimer, visited the Pentagon to pitch an idea with his co-producer. … ‘Profiles from the Frontline’ was aired in the US on the eve of war in Iraq. Its popularity with viewers suggested to the Pentagon that a similar approach would go down well once the real fighting began, as long as the embedded reporters played their part.
John Kampfner
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
“This story” is the dramatic rescue by commandos of Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital, this week. … That she is a blonde, attractive 19-year-old from a tiny hill town in West Virginia only enhances the story. …
[Independent television producer] Larry Sanitsky believes that the Jessica Lynch story is worth about $US300,000 ($500,000) to $US400,000. …
Jessica Lynch had been a very dedicated soldier, Mr Sanitsky said. “Ultimately, when this experience is over, and if there is an economic benefit to her, I don’t see that as problematic.” …
But if a network was wavering, there might be one other factor that could see Jessica Lynch’s rescue transformed into entertainment. “If someone that they normally couldn’t get wanted to do it, like Jennifer Aniston,” Mr Sanitsky suggested, “that would make it different.”
The dramatic rescue of former POW Jessica Lynch played like something out of a movie — and soon it will be just that, reports Variety. NBC is fast-tracking development on a two-hour telepic detailing Lynch’s jaw-dropping ordeal and the preparations that went into planning her rescue. The network has met with writers and is expected to choose a producer within a few days. No timetable is in place yet, but the goal is to get the movie on the air during the early part of the 2003-04 season.
The footage from the raid, shot not by journalists but by soldiers with night-vision cameras, was fed in real time to the central command in Qatar. The video was artfully edited by the Pentagon and released as proof that a battle to free Lynch had occurred when it had not.
This fabrication has already been celebrated by an A&E special and will soon be an NBC movie.
So who is a hero? During the attack on Iraq, some of [Rachel] Corrie’s friends emailed her picture to MSNBC asking that it be included on the station’s “wall of heroes,” along with Jessica Lynch. The network didn’t comply, but Corrie is being honored in other ways. Her family has received more than 10,000 letters of support, communities across the country have organized memorial services and children from the occupied territories are being named Rachel. It’s not a made-for-TV kind of tribute, but maybe that’s for the best.
14. Just Rewards?
More than a week after Private Jessica Lynch was rescued in Iraq, money, college scholarships and gifts continue to pour in.
Everything from trips to Hawaii and Hungary, flowers, new cars and money have been offered to the 19-year-old Army supply clerk.
The state has even agreed to foot the bill for a party when she returns home to Palestine, West Virginia. …
Wirt County Assessor Debbie Hennen has coordinated several fund-raisers for Lynch and her family since March 23, when news came that her 507th Maintenance Company had been attacked in southern Iraq.
Hennen established a bank account, which now contains more than $4000.
Various fund-raising events, from car washes to pig roasts, have raised another $4900 and a local Wal-Mart has pledged $1000.
Aides to West Virginia’s governor, Bob Wise, a Democrat whose office sent an official to assist the Lynch family the day she disappeared in Iraq, said he was considering issuing a proclamation declaring a “Jessica Lynch Day.” The aides said dozens of calls of congratulations from other states have come in for the Lynch family and for West Virginians.
“I really do consider this a miracle in the mountains,” Governor Wise said.
[Gov. Bob Wise] offered her a full scholarship to any college in the state system…
The joy of her rescue still lingers in the area. Lynch’s home county, as well as her home state, are planning large celebrations in her honor when she arrives home from her stay at a Washington. D.C. area Army Hospital, where she is recovering from her extensive injuries. … The state of West Virginia is sponsoring a “statewide party” May 31 in Lynch’s honor. According to the local residents, the media hasn’t seen anything yet as far as a celebration goes — just wait until Lynch returns home.
You think you’re busy?
You should work at the post office in Palestine, W.Va., where birthday and get-well greetings are pouring in for Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.
“We’re getting 2 to 4 more feet of mail a day and 30 to 50 packages a day,” substitute Postmaster Sarah Johnson said Friday.
Before Johnson could finish saying how busy she was, Bob Phillips, an elementary science teacher and United Methodist minister from Beallsville, Ohio, came in and wanted to know Lynch’s address so he could send the 80 or so get-well cards his fifth- and sixth-graders have signed.
“General delivery will be fine,” Johnson answered.
Lynch doesn’t need a route number and box number anymore. …
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus honored Lynch and the other deployed troops in Charleston Friday night. … Miriah Duckworth has written “Jessi’s Song” about her friend and recorded it Thursday at Sweetsong Studios near Parkersburg. … Charleston attorney Shawn Bayliss has organized the Operation United Homefront Freedom Ride and Rally to honor Lynch and the troops. … Pam Nicolais, a cousin to Lynch, will receive a gift package for Lynch this afternoon from the Weirton-Wellsburg chapter of the West Virginia Credit Union League — $1,000 in cash, a $500 gift card from Kaufmann’s Department Store, a $100 gift card from Sears Roebuck & Co. and a gift basket from J.C. Penney Co. Inc. … Jerry Parkins, director of the sales department of the Charleston Marriott Town Center, is offering a free two-night stay for Lynch and her family “whenever she wants to use it.” …
Former POW Jessica Lynch is coming to Hawaii.
After she’s fully recovered, Lynch will be on Maui for a free vacation. And now, state officials are offering free trips to the other POWs.
Lynch said that when she feels better, she’s accepting the invitation extended by the Maui News to visit the Valley Isle. Tuesday, that invitation was expanded to POW Shoshana Johnson and six other American soldiers captured and released during the Iraq War.
The Maui News got involved when Jessica Lynch’s West Virginia hometown paper mentioned Lynch’s desire to visit Maui. Now, many Hawaii businesses want to help.
“The businesses in Hawaii have basically come out of the woodwork in support of this,” said Marsha Wienert, director of the Maui Visitors Bureau.
Gov. Linda Lingle said the visits by the POWs will be tremendous publicity for Hawaii.
On April 13, two fully equipped Ervin Cable Construction crews rolled out of Sturgis and headed for West Virginia. The local company assisted Charter Communications by donating labor to construct a 24-mile fiber optic cable extension to former POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s home outside of Palestine, W.Va. Some of the construction took place in the rugged hills common to West Virginia — accessible only by ATV. Construction on the cable line was completed within a week.
As for Private Lynch, her status as cult hero is stronger than ever. Internet auction sites list Jessica Lynch items, from an oil painting with an opening bid of $200 to a $5 “America Loves Jessica Lynch” fridge magnet.
15. The Iraqi “Hero’s” Payoff
Lynch’s birthday bash in Palestine begins at the post office on W.Va. 14 at 11 a.m. when members of the Friends of Mohammed — a group founded in Malden, W.Va., to honor the Iraqi lawyer who assisted U.S. troops in locating her — will throw a public picnic featuring Middle Eastern food and dedicate an honorary garden they planted there.
U.S. troops were tipped off to Lynch’s whereabouts in a Nasiriyah hospital by an Iraqi lawyer who, at great risk, walked six miles until he found some Marines. …
[The lawyer, Mohammed Oden] Al-Rehaief was injured during several risky treks up and down a road that came to be known as “ambush alley,” in an effort to transport information on the Nasiriyah hospital were Pfc. Lynch was held to U.S. Marines stationed outside the city.
A source close to those who helped the 32-year-old lawyer, Mohammed Odeh Rehaief, come to this country said his injury occurred before Lynch’s rescue, when the car he was riding in was hit by U.S. or British fire. At the time, Rehaief was making a clandestine trip to speak with U.S. Special Forces troops about the captured American soldier.
Earlier reports about Rehaief’s role in rescuing Army Pfc. Lynch have said that he had to travel several miles outside the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah to reach a U.S. military checkpoint, at one point trekking through what U.S. Marines had nicknamed “Ambush Alley.”
Rehaief’s injury affects his sight in one eye, the source said.
Asked about the circumstances of Rehaief’s injury, spokesmen for U.S. Army public affairs and for U.S. Central Command said yesterday that they had no information about the incident.
According to Newsweek’s April 14 edition, which featured Lynch on the cover, the Iraqi man, who said he witnessed Lynch being slapped around, was twice sent back to the hospital on reconnaissance missions.
Remarkably, considering all the guards around the place, Mohammed managed to sneak inside her room…
To confirm her location, officials with the Defense Intelligence Agency (search), the military counterpart of the CIA, equipped and trained an Iraqi informant with a concealed video camera. On the day of the raid, the informant walked around the hospital, videotaping entrances and a route to Lynch’s room.
Knowledgeable sources told Fox News that this specific informant was paid for his services and that he is still in Iraq. …
Al-Rehaief, whose wife worked in the hospital, told U.S. Marines he saw Lynch being slapped by a security guard there.
Severely injured in the attack, [Lynch] was in a nearby hospital when Rehaief saw her being slapped on the face by an Iraqi security officer.
Upset by the incident, Rehaief risked his life to contact U.S. military forces stationed outside Nasiriyah to tell them about Lynch’s location. He made several subsequent trips to provide information about the hospital’s layout to U.S. Special Forces, who rescued Lynch on April 1.
The staff members said that an Iraqi intelligence officer was sometimes stationed outside the door but that they tried to move the patient beds to conceal Lynch. And they dismiss as false a well-publicized story told by an Iraqi lawyer about how he had seen a dark-clad man slapping Lynch in her hospital bed.
Senior military officials provided only a few details about the intelligence that led to Private Lynch’s rescue, but family members said they were told that she was located because an Iraqi doctor handed a note to a Marine indicating that she was at a hospital, listed the room number and added that she was being tortured.
Told of the allegation through an interpreter, nurse Shinah wells up with tears. Gathering herself, she responds quietly: “This is a lie. But why ask me? Why don’t you ask Jessica what kind of treatment she received?”
But that is easier said than done. At the Pentagon last week, U.S. Army spokesman Lt.-Col. Ryan Yantis said the door to Lynch remains closed as she continues her recovery at Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Centre.
“I never saw any strangers near Jessica,” said Furat Hussein, one of the nurses. “She was never mistreated.”
The Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed Oden al-Rehaief, and his family were whisked off to the United States.
An Iraqi lawyer who helped U.S commandos locate and rescue prisoner of war Jessica Lynch has been granted asylum in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced Tuesday.
Ridge identified the man as Mohammed Al Rehaief and said the lawyer and his wife and 5-year-old daughter arrived in the United States earlier this month after Homeland Security granted them “humanitarian parole.” On Monday, the family was granted asylum by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
With the grant of asylum, Al Rehaief and his family can remain in the United States indefinitely. In a year, he can apply for permanent residency and five years after that, he will be eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship.
Rehaief, his wife and their 5-year-old daughter have been in the Washington area since April 10, and Rehaief has been receiving treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. On Monday, they were granted political asylum. They were allowed into the country under a program called “humanitarian parole,” which expedites entry into the United States and is often used in medical emergencies.
But a spokesman for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services said yesterday that Rehaief was approved for humanitarian parole more for his own safety than for medical reasons.
“Quite honestly, it was the fastest way to get him and his family to safety in the United States,” said spokesman Bill Strassberger.
The Iraqi lawyer who led U.S. forces to former POW Jessica Lynch (search) has accepted a job offer from Washington lobbying firm The Livingston Group days after the United States granted him asylum.
The company, founded by former U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston, said details on 33-year-old Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief’s new responsibilities were still in the works.
[Al-Rehaief’s] credibility as a source, however, is difficult to verify because he and his family were whisked to the United States, where he was immediately granted political asylum and has refused all interview requests. His future was assured with a job with a lobbying firm run by former Republican Rep. Bob Livingston that represents the defense industry and a $500,000 book contract with HarperCollins, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox network did much to hype Lynch’s story, as it did the rest of the war.
And the ending to his story?
Al-Rehaief now has an office with a Washington lobbying firm, the Livingston Group, whose principal is the former powerful Republican House member Robert Livingston.
With his own book and other deals pending, al-Rehaief is not saying much.
16. Questions Left Unanswered
[T]ens of thousands of taxpayer dollars are being spent on covering up what happened to Jessica Lynch and her mates during and after their unit was ambushed and they were captured.
The Army is investigating the Iraqi ambush of a maintenance company that resulted in nine dead soldiers and six prisoners of war, including the capture of Pfc. Jessica Lynch. …
One question the team is addressing is the plight of 19-year-old Pfc. Lynch, whose capture by Iraqis and subsequent rescue by an allied special-operations team propelled her to folk-hero status across America.
The Washington Post reported that she staged a fierce fight before capture, emptying a gun and killing Iraqi attackers before being stabbed and shot herself.
But two Pentagon officials in interviews cast doubt on that report. The officials said all evidence suggests that Pfc. Lynch’s truck crashed in the chaos of the ambush in the central Iraqi town of Nasiriyah. She suffered several bone fractures and was in no position to put up a fight, the officials said.
The dramatic rescue of captured Pfc. Jessica Lynch from her hospital bed in Iraq by the U.S. Special Forces quickly became one of the signature episodes of the Iraq war.
Now two Illinois lawmakers and another from New York want the Defense Department to investigate whether the story that seems too good to be true really is.
Democrats Rahm Emanuel and Jan Schakowsky are disturbed by a British Broadcasting Corp. documentary called “Saving Private Jessica: Fact or Fiction?’” that claims her daring rescue was not quite what it seemed.
“We need to have an independent inquiry to look at what happened,” said Schakowsky. The Pentagon discounted the BBC report, but Schakowsky said there should be another look.
Emanuel, who represents a North Side and suburban district next to Schakowsky’s, sent a letter last week to Joseph Schmitz, the Defense Department inspector general, asking for a probe. The letter was co-signed by Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat.
While Lynch’s rescue was “emblematic of the courage and dedication of our Armed Forces,” states the Emanuel-Slaughter letter, the BBC report raised troubling questions as to whether the rescue was “a premeditated fabrication. This story and other reports that followed have threatened to tarnish the image of this daring rescue.”
Emanuel and Slaughter state that they want an investigation into the BBC allegations to ensure that the rescuers’ “selfless act of heroism is never questioned again.”
The storm was set off by BBC reporter John Kampfner, maker of the documentary. In a BBC.com story, Kampfner wrote that the Lynch saga, as portrayed by the Pentagon, is “one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.”
17. Bitter Endings
Far from winning hearts and minds, the US operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked their lives treating both Private Lynch and Iraqi victims of the war.
The medical team that cared for Lynch at the hospital formerly known as Saddam Hospital is only now beginning to appreciate how grand a myth was built around the four hours the U.S. raiding party spent with them early on April Fool’s Day.
And they are disappointed.
US soldiers videotaped the rescue, but among the many scenes not shown to the press at US Central Command in Doha was one of four doctors who were handcuffed and interrogated, along with two civilian patients, one of whom was immobile and connected to a drip. “They were doctors, with stethoscopes round their necks,” Dr Harith said.
“Even in war, a doctor should not be treated like that.” …
“There are two faces to Americans,” Dr Harith said. “One is freedom and democracy, and giving kids sweets. The other is killing and hating my people. So I am very confused. I feel sad because I will never see Jessica again, and I feel happy because she is happy and has gone back to her life. If I could speak to her I would say: ‘Congratulations!’” …
“What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor — it’s a myth,” said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch’s life after she was brought to the hospital by Iraqi military intelligence.
18. In Perspective
It’s great that Jessica is safe. Of course, her war experience is hardly typical.
She’ll emerge not only with her body intact but also with international celebrity and, if she wants, talk show spots and modeling contracts. (One can imagine Playboy is already thinking centrefold for a special issue: PoW Girls of Iraq). Needless to say, thousands of other people — mostly on the Iraqi side — will simply end up dead.
Readers are split in their reaction to the account. While some express pride in the U.S. military’s effort save one of their own, others are upset that the story of one private’s rescue has received so much attentions while others are dying in combat. One Milford, N.J., couple say that “to single out one soldier as ’special’ is a disservice to those who are serving are country in often deplorable conditions. The cover article implies that the American public is only interested in the ‘feel-good’ stories with the happy ending. The more compelling story was the group of bodies that was also removed with Private Lynch, including Private [Lori] Piestawa, the first female killed in Iraq.” And a Jacksonville, N.C., man asks “Is she the only American to serve in a war? … I do agree that she is a Marine [actually, Lynch is in the Army] doing a job. I don’t agree with all the fuss.”
But where the manipulation of this saga really gets ugly is in the premeditated manufacture of the rescue itself, which stains those who have performed real acts of bravery, whether in war or peacetime.
A reader in Calgary, Canada, catches a whiff of conspiracy. “What a coincidence; what timing! Just as the American military is getting criticized for blowing away civilians by the carload, a cute, totally photogenic Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old from West Virginia (Palestine, no less), gets rescued from the clutches of the evil Iraqis. Can you say publicity stunt?” He continues, “A camo-clad damsel gets rescued and all other issues (like hundreds of dead civilians or the fact that no significant weapons of mass destruction have been found) fade into the background.”
The story was a gift to a grateful media. There was barely a mention of Jessica’s fallen comrades whose bodies had been retrieved from shallow graves during the same mission. A bad story had become a good one.
John Kampfner
War SpinBBC Two
May 18, 2003
The brutality of our troops in Iraq is now infamous — the making Iraqis run naked, the beating of civilians (documented by independent reporters and Al Jazeera) and the killing of people who do not respond immediately to English orders to “stop” or “lay down your arms”; once again, it may be a language barrier or it may be a new policy of brutality our men are using.
In all these cases, and in the case of Private Jessica Lynch, none of these soldiers returning are allowed to talk with the media. After Senator Byrd returned from having talked with Ms. Lynch, he seemed even more firm in his resolve to condemn the attack in Iraq and condemned Bush even further. I’m sure, from what I heard in scuttlebutt on the hill that he may have heard the truth from Ms. Lynch, not the dispelled myths that the Bush team keeps trying to spin out for the public about her “heroic” fight and her “valiant” rescue!
It turns out that the lives of some US citizens — even beautiful, young, white women — are valued more than others. And nothing demonstrates this more starkly than the opposing responses to Rachel Corrie [crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza seven days before Lynch was taken into Iraqi custody on March 23] and Pte Jessica Lynch.
When the Pentagon announced Lynch’s successful rescue, she became a hero, complete with “America loves Jessica” fridge magnets, stickers, T-shirts, mugs, country songs and an NBC made-for-TV movie. According to former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, President George Bush was “full of joy for Jessica Lynch.” Her rescue, we were told, was a testament to a core American value: as West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller said to the Senate: “We take care of our people.”
Do they? Rachel Corrie’s death, which made the papers for two days and then virtually disappeared, has met with almost total official silence, despite the fact that eyewitnesses claim it was a deliberate act. President Bush has said nothing about a US citizen killed by a US-made bulldozer bought with US tax dollars. A US congressional resolution demanding an independent inquiry has been buried in committee, leaving the Israeli military’s investigation — which cleared itself of any wrongdoing — as the only official investigation.
[T]he revelation that thousands of media reports regarding [Lynch’s] entire Iraqi experience were utter fantasy is only the latest instance in an endless string of uncovered Bush Administration lies or hoaxes — faithfully and unquestioningly parroted by newsrooms from coast to coast which made little attempt to provide context, let alone accuracy.
Government officials often rely on one of the same favorite devices as [discredited New York Times reporter Jayson] Blair — the “unnamed” or “official” source. How many times, before and during the invasion of Iraq, did the New York Times run a front page story, leaked from the White House, that bore no relationship at all to reality? How many times did some embedded American network or newspaper reporter get a breathless scoop of the discovery of Iraq’s fabled weapons of mass destruction? How many other big, iconic stories, like Lynch’s rescue or the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, will yet turn out to have been staged for a gullible public?
Should they ever choose to come clean, the perpetrators of those fantasies might have something interesting to tell us. Jayson Blair doesn’t.
It was all a PR stunt, which American military types would have no trouble justifying: keeping the country’s war-lust up is more important than providing the stupid, annoying, persnickety truth.
The [BBC] documentary demonstrates how shockingly easy it is to parade this kind of propaganda as “fact”: take a self-congratulatory media and add the memory of the frightening ease with which Bush ignored world opinion and started a war. It’s all bad.
The Lynch rescue story — a made-for-TV bit of official propaganda — will probably survive as the war’s most heroic moment, despite proving as fictitious as the stated rationales for the invasion itself.
If the movies, books and other renditions of “saving Private Lynch” were to be honestly presented, it would expose this caper as merely one in a series of egregious lies marketed to us by the Bush administration.
19. Rare Moments of Media Self-Reflection
Sadly, almost nothing fed to reporters about either Lynch’s original capture by Iraqi forces or her “rescue” by U.S. forces turns out to be true. Consider the April 3 Washington Post story on her capture headlined “She Was Fighting to the Death,” which reported, based on unnamed sources, that Lynch “continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds,” adding that she was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in.
Several… readers believe that The [Washington] Post “has some problems of its own with the veracity of its reporting,” as one put it. He was referring to the paper’s exclusive April 3 front-page account of how Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, according to “U.S. officials,” fought during an Iraqi ambush, continued firing after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds and being stabbed, and shot several Iraqi soldiers before running out of ammunition. This account, which has remained exclusive to The Post, is by far the story that readers continue to question most. I wrote a column about this on April 20, but the questioning, which has nothing to do with Pfc. Lynch but everything to do with anonymous news sources, continues. In fact, it is increasing as journalism is put in the spotlight. If there is a different version, or a confirming version, of this that is authoritative, I hope somebody will write it, along with a more probing account of her rescue.
Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s capture and rescue was certainly a dramatic affair — particularly in The Post. This newspaper told its readers that she had been shot and stabbed, that she had fought off her Iraqi attackers — her gun blazing — until she went down and was taken prisoner, hospitalized and then rescued eight days later. Trouble is, much of that may be false.
Lynch apparently was not shot. Lynch was not stabbed. Lynch may not have put up much of a fight, maybe none at all. The lights may have gone out for her the moment her unit was attacked and her vehicle went off the road. It was then, probably, that she suffered several broken bones. This information, too, was in The Post — sort of.
20. One Last, Odd Note
There’s something strange with the Jessica Lynch story.
She was allegedly captured on March 23rd… However her nine domain names [jessicalynch .org, .net, .com, .us, .biz, .info, .ws, .tv, .cc] were registered by businessmen on the 17th of March! That’s five business days before her capture, which caused the Dow Jones to climb over 215 points as the media played her story…
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Filed Under: Iraq, Jessica Lynch, Media
