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deep

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Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'


Private Lynch has lost her memory of her rescue



By John Kampfner




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.

There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound



Dr Harith a-Houssona

Private Lynch, a 19-year-old army clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was captured when her company took a wrong turning just outside Nasiriya and was ambushed.

Nine of her comrades were killed and Private Lynch was taken to the local hospital, which at the time was swarming with Fedayeen. Eight days later US special forces stormed the hospital, capturing the "dramatic" events on a night vision camera.

They were said to have come under fire from inside and outside the building, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter.


Dr a-Houssona found no bullet wounds
Reports claimed that she had stab and bullet wounds and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.

But 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.

"I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle," said Dr Harith a-Houssona, who looked after her.

Jessica amnesia

"There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only road traffic accident. They want to distort the picture. I don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury."

Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.


Dr Uday was surprised by the manner of the rescue
"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."

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance.

But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen



General Vincent Brooks


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 ***** 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.

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.

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.

But doctors now say she has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will.



_______________________________________________________-

I know the Bush Administration has lied.

I heard more than one source say she had no bullet wounds or knife wounds.


Lynch is saying she can not remember anything. That way she does not have to say what is true.

I am happy she survived.
 
I don't think this is a cover up -- she probably doesn't remember anything. She was in a traumatic situation and its probably her brain reacting by blocking out what happened. The brain just shuts down rather than reliving the incident. I also think I remember hearing she had a concussion, which could cause amnesia [could be wrong about the concussion though].
 
She probably doesn't remember anything. Recovery from all of the :censored: she went through is hard enough without a controversy. I read where the report about the concussion wasn't true but who knows? She was a POW, and that's all we really need to know. She needs to left alone to recover in peace. I'll be pissed off if they bother her about this. :mad: :mad: :censored: :censored: :scream: :scream:
 
Deep, is the second to last statement by you, or by the writer of the article?

If it's by you, I will ask - are you a doctor? How can you make a statement like that, that she lied? On the news, they said that many people go through memory loss after a traumatic experience like this. How would you feel if you came back from war after being an injured POW and people said you were lying about losing your memory.

Come on, Deep, we all know that you hate anything having t do with the administration, but you're taking it a little too far when you accuse a young brave soldier of lying, without any basis in fact whatsoever.
 
This story really doesn't add anything and certainly doesn't show that the Bush Administration was lying. Special Forces went to the hospital thinking Iraqi soldiers were still there. An Iraqi doctor's assessment of the military situation would not be something to rely on in the midst of combat.

Reports of bullet and knife wounds floated around at first, but were soon dismissed once Lynch received medical care from US doctors.
 
80sU2isBest said:
On the news, they said...


:eyebrow:

80sU2isBest said:
Come on, Deep, we all know that you hate anything having t do with the administration, but you're taking it a little too far when you accuse a young brave soldier of lying, without any basis in fact whatsoever.

i don't the article suggests lynch is lying so much as it suggests the 'spin-masters' of the government are taking advantage of the fact that she can't remember anything to fabricate a story which is much grander than would otherwise be true.
 
I personally don't think she's lying about anything but I'm also not the least bit surprised that the Adminstration would take advantage of her memory loss to put their own spin on this whole thing.
 
kobayashi said:


:eyebrow:



i don't the article suggests lynch is lying so much as it suggests the 'spin-masters' of the government are taking advantage of the fact that she can't remember anything to fabricate a story which is much grander than would otherwise be true.

Nope, the article didn't suggest she is lying, but Deep sure did. This is what Deep said:


"Lynch is saying she can not remember anything. That way she does not have to say what is true. "
 
The story was printed almost two weeks ago with an interview with the civilian Iraqi doctors. The first told of trying to give her back and being fired upon and the soldiers coming like commandos , but with two ruinning cameras. Splinter Cell anyone.

Also ditto BAW & Joyful Girl.
 
Lynch is a poor 19-year-old from a small town where unemployment is 30%. She wanted to be a teacher. She enlisted to get education benefits to achieve her goal. I heard this information in an interview of people who know her. It was a few weeks ago. I think I am realling correctly.


80s,

I don?t think SHE is lying. I think she is not in control of the story.
I can see how you read what I wrote. It was not my intention to disparage her.
All of these young enlisted soldiers have my respect.

I do not hate the Administration. I am critical of a lot of their policies. I don?t buy in to the ?all or nothing? mentality.

W is without a doubt the worst President in my lifetime. Eisenhower was president when I was born.
 
Last edited:
He is definitely, without a doubt, the worst in your opinion. You'll have no problem convincing me of that.
 
Deep,

"W is without a doubt the worst President in my lifetime. Eisenhower was president when I was born."

Well, in W's defense, he has done more for US foreign Policy in 2 years and 4 months he has been in office than Clinton did in 8 years as president.

In addition, the average unemployment rate in the USA under W is less than the average unemployment rate during Clintons first four years in office.
 
Sting, I hate to disillusion you, but outside the US it is pretty commonly held that starting wars and bullying so-called "allies" is not stellar foreign policy. Oh and last time I checked, running up the largest deficit in history doesn't count as a wonderful domestic policy either. But nevermind. You keep telling yourself whatever it is you want to believe. :rolleyes:
 
sulawesigirl4 said:
But nevermind. You keep telling yourself whatever it is you want to believe. :rolleyes:

Sula, that was pretty condescending.
 
Well, I don't particularly like the deficits and what I see as bad diplomacy either. Some people might say I'm looking at the hole of a doughnut, but.........c'est la vie.
 
PART II



AFTER THE WAR





There Was No Hussein Bunker, CBS Reports
From Reuters

May 29, 2003

WASHINGTON ? The Baghdad bunker that the United States said it bombed on the opening day of the Iraq war in a bid to kill Saddam Hussein never existed, a broadcast report said Wednesday.

"CBS Evening News" quoted a U.S. Army colonel in charge of inspecting key sites in Baghdad as saying no trace of a bunker or bodies was found at the site on the southern outskirts of the Iraqi capital.

"When we came out here, the primary thing they were looking for was an underground facility, or bodies, forensics, and basically what they saw was giant holes created. No underground facilities, no bodies," Col. Tim Madere said.

The network reported that the CIA searched the site once and that Madere searched it twice as part of efforts to find traces of DNA that could indicate if Hussein or his sons had been killed or wounded.

CBS said a palace of Hussein's remained standing amid the surrounding destruction. It quoted Madere as saying that anyone who had been in the building could have survived the raid.

Shortly after the attack, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters: "There's no question but that the strike on that leadership headquarters was successful. We have photographs of what took place. The question is, what was in there?"

The U.S. in effect acknowledged the March 20 raid failed to kill Hussein when it launched a second attack aimed at the Iraqi president April 7. His fate and those of sons Uday and Qusai remain unclear.

Rumsfeld is advocating for a Nuke bomb called a bunker buster.

Supposedly it goes 5 stories underground. They say it is low risk?

This talk of Saddam being 5 stories underground is not plausible.

Baghdad is an alluvial plain. They would have to have large pumping stations going 24 hours a day, that would easily be detectable.


Well, It sounds the Iraq war may have begun with an ersatz attack. Faulty intelligence or deception?
 
The article only says that one suspected bunker did not exist at the targeted location. Intelligence is not a perfect science - this hardly qualifies as "deception".
 
deep said:

Well, It sounds (like) the Iraq war may have begun with an ersatz attack. Faulty intelligence or deception?

I agree it is too early to conclude this for sure.

That is why I wrote may have begun

I still don't think Rumsfeld (Dr. Strangelove) should be given small nukes.

His track record is proving troublesome.
 
Here's a newer article on the Pvt. Lynch fiasco

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16033

Pentagon Aims Guns at Lynch Reports

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
May 29, 2003

It is one thing when the talk-show bullies, who shamelessly smeared the last president even as he attacked the training camps of Al Qaeda, now term it anti-American or even treasonous to dare criticize the Bush administration. It's another when our Pentagon ? a $400-billion-a-year juggernaut ? savages individual journalists for questioning its version of events.


Especially if you're that journalist.


Last week, this column reported the findings of a British Broadcasting Corp. special report that accused the U.S. military and media of inaccurately and manipulatively hyping the story of U.S. Pvt. Jessica Lynch and her rescue from an Iraq hospital. The column was also informed by similar and independently reported articles and statements in the Toronto Star, the Washington Post and other reputable publications.


Expected ? and received ? was a hysterical belch of outrage from the right-wing media, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire, which has already committed a huge book advance to the telling of this mythic tale. A fiery and disingenuous response from the Pentagon, however, was quite a bit more sobering.


Calling the column a "tirade," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke wrote in a letter to The Times that "Scheer's claims are outrageous, patently false and unsupported by the facts."


"Official spokespeople in Qatar and in Washington, as well as the footage released, reflected the events accurately," the Pentagon letter continued. "To suggest otherwise is an insult and does a grave disservice to the brave men and women involved."


Actually, what is a grave disservice is manipulating a gullible media with leaked distortions from unnamed official sources about Lynch's heroics in battle. That aside, it would have been easier to rebut the Pentagon if its spokeswoman had actually questioned any of the facts the BBC or this column reported. In particular, the Pentagon turned down the request by the BBC and other media to view the full, unedited footage of the rescue.


Perhaps Clarke is frustrated that in the days since the BBC report, several major publications such as the Chicago Tribune and the London Daily Mail have independently verified much of the BBC's disturbing account of what the broadcasting corporation called "one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived."


The distortions concerning Lynch began two days after the rescue with a front-page Washington Post story by veteran reporters Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb. They cited U.S. officials as the source of their information that Lynch "fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition" and that she "continued firing after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds." The Post quoted one of the unnamed U.S. officials as saying "she was fighting to the death. She did not want to be taken alive."


Despite their current defensiveness, Clarke and other Pentagon honchos had to know that the story attributed to U.S. officials was false, because Lynch had at that point already been rescued and examined by U.S. military doctors, who found no evidence of a single gunshot wound, let alone multiple gunshot wounds. Yet they did nothing to challenge the Post story, which was carried worldwide and quickly became the main heroic propaganda myth of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.


It was only last week, after the BBC-initiated brouhaha, that the Pentagon finally launched its own investigation of what actually occurred when Lynch was taken prisoner. According to the Washington Times, the investigation came about after top Pentagon officials cast doubt on the Lynch battle-scene account, of which she has no memory.


However, the Pentagon investigators were not asked to look into the circumstances surrounding Lynch's subsequent rescue. Much of the BBC's account has now been supported by other media investigations, which confirm that a U.S. attack on an unguarded hospital was spun into the stuff of Hollywood heroics.


The Tribune's Monday story, for example, provided new details of how slickly a tale of derring-do was created, enhanced for television by that five-minute Pentagon-supplied night-vision video. The Tribune also added details supporting the BBC account that hospital staff members had placed Lynch in an ambulance and tried to deliver her to a U.S. checkpoint before being turned back by random American fire.


What is particularly sad in all of this is that a wonderfully hopeful story was available to the Pentagon to sell to the eager media: one in which besieged Iraqi doctors and nurses bravely cared for ? and supplied their own blood to ? a similarly brave young American woman in a time of madness and violence. Instead, eager to turn the war into a morality play between good and evil, the military used ? if not abused ? Lynch to put a heroic spin on an otherwise sorry tale of unjustified invasion.


The truth hurts, but that's no excuse for trying to shoot the messenger.


Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times.
 
"The truth hurts, but that's no excuse for trying to shoot the messenger."


"Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times"

Yep, the truth hurts. The fact that the USA, UK and Australia were so incredibly successful in bringing down one of the worst dictators in history must hurt. No mass loss of life predicted by Robert and his friends ever happened. They were wrong and I guess that must hurt which explains why we have articles like this one written by Robert. Does this article really have anything relevant to do with the situation in Iraq? This article is simply an unsuccessful attempt to dig up dirt on an organization that is not one of his favorites. If Robert wants to know what really happen, go talk to the soldiers that were involved in the operation. The BBC was not there, the US military was there.
 
Who do you believe?

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This man was a "Fighter Pilot"?:huh:
 
Who knows. Just realize that when the government reports that everything is going perfectly in a war, it is pretty unlikely.

Melon
 
melon said:
Who knows. Just realize that when the government reports that everything is going perfectly in a war, it is pretty unlikely.

Melon

But surely only the government know what's really going on in a war. I mean the military work for the government and we all know that only the military know the truth about what happens in war. And there's clearly no reason for the military to lie: if the military just happened to accidently bomb a school and kill every inhabitant, there would be no reason for them to lie about it! They're the only ones who know what happened and they will tell the truth, the whole truth and only the truth!

Those pesky reporters don't know anything about what happened. They weren't there. No, not even those reporters who were in the Palestine hotel when it was attacked. They weren't really there, they don't really know what happened. And besides, the media lie! They're all liberals and not to be trusted. No, we mustn't trust the media - when we want to know what happened in the war we must be sure to ask those impartial military people, only they can tell us the truth.

:rolleyes:
 
nbcrusader said:
The article only says that one suspected bunker did not exist at the targeted location. Intelligence is not a perfect science - this hardly qualifies as "deception".
But just think about it, what if they used a "little" nucliar bomb there. :(
 
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