Jessica Lynch’s Heroic Rescue — Another Fabrication?
Earlier, I posted about Ex-Sgt. Nadim Abou Rabeh’s version of Saddam’s capture and how he claims the army re-enacted the capture to alter the details a bit.
Now, I’ve been made aware of yet another discrepency in the televised “truths” we’ve come to rely on in the War in Iraq. Apparently, the version of the Jessica Lynch capture and rescue that we’ve been told isn’t the only version.
In an article in mid-May of this year, The Guardian printed an article about Jessica Lynch’s rescue that suggests that facts of her situation were embellished to provide the American public with a patriotic effort to rally around.
The two version makes one wonder how much of what we’re being told is truth and how much is being fabricated or at least manipulated. More and more I wonder who we can trust to give us the truth and the facts. Certainly the American media itself seems to be behaving as if it’s been intimidated into tiptoeing on the eggshells the Bush Administration seems to have scattered about.
The story the U.S. saw:
Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated. It was only thanks to a courageous Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, that she was saved. According to the Pentagon, Al-Rehaief risked his life to alert the Americans that Lynch was being held.
Just after midnight, Army Rangers and Navy Seals stormed the Nassiriya hospital. Their “daring” assault on enemy territory was captured by the military’s night-vision camera. They were said to have come under fire, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter. That was the message beamed back to viewers within hours of the rescue. [“The Truth About Jessica” (The Guardian, May 15, 2005)]
And the U.K.’s version of what happened:
The doctors in Nassiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for Lynch 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 was like a mother to her and she was like a daughter,”says Khalida Shinah.
“We gave her three bottles of blood, two of them from the medical staff because there was no blood at this time,”said Dr Harith al-Houssona, who looked after her throughout her ordeal. “I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle. Then I did another examination. There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only RTA, road traffic accident,” he recalled. “They want to distort the picture. I don’t know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury.”
The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team’s Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. “He asked: ‘Are there any Fedayeen over there?’ and I said, ‘No’.” All the same, the next day “America’s finest warriors” descended on the building.
“We heard the noise of helicopters,” says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. “We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.
“It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, ‘Go, go, go’, with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.” All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame.
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Al-Houssona had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. “I told her I will try and help you escape to the American Army but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life.” He put her in an ambulance and instructed the driver to go to the American checkpoint. When he was approaching it, the Americans opened fire. They fled just in time back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.
A military cameraman had shot footage of the rescue. It was a race against time for the video to be edited. The video presentation was ready a few hours after the first brief announcement. When it was shown, General Vincent Brooks, the US spokesman in Doha, declared: “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.”
None of the details that the doctors provided Correspondent with made it to the video or to any subsequent explanations or clarifications by US authorities. I asked the Pentagon spokesman in Washington, Bryan Whitman, to release the full tape of the rescue, rather than its edited version, to clear up any discrepancies. He declined. Whitman would not talk about what kind of Iraqi resistance the American forces faced. Nor would he comment on the injuries Lynch actually sustained. “I understand there is some conflicting information out there and in due time the full story will be told, I’m sure,” he told me. [“The Truth About Jessica” (The Guardian, May 15, 2005)]
Having read the U.K.’s version, don’t you feel like maybe the whole Jessica Lynch thing was way overblown? Feels like they brought a cannon to kill an ant. Reminds me a little of Wag the Dog. There’s just so many conflicting stories out there these days; so many mistruths.
Oh, and one more thing… Jessica Lynch doesn’t recall any of it.
Trouble is that doctors now say she has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will. Her memory loss means that “researchers” have been called in to fill in the gaps. [“The Truth About Jessica” (The Guardian, May 15, 2005)]
Hat tip to Monkeypup.
tags: Jessica Lynch, Conspiracy Theories, Iraq, lie, UK
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13 comments
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on August 24, 2005 at 11:25 am
Andy said:
Yep. That second version is the one we all know in the UK all right. But i think much of the story was out long before the Guardian article.
I think the word you are searching for is ‘propaganda’. A well used tool of fascist (in its truest sense) regimes.
on August 24, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Jeff (no, the other one) said:
Psy-ops have been performed on us, once again, by the military-industrial complex. Where’s my DVD of Wag the Dog…?
on August 24, 2005 at 8:10 pm
Big Dog said:
Well, the book about her experience leaves no doubt that she had been raped and sodomized anally. The fact that she does not remember anything is probably the result of a repressed memory. I believe both her legs were broken, common among the thugs there to keepo women from kicking while they are raping her. I would believe our footage before a story by a UK paper and I have read that the man in question told our military where she was. This other story was not part of the original.
I do not know what happened nor do I care. I felt we over did the whole thing to begin with and not to give us great support for the war but because she is a woman. There was a male from her unit who fought the enemy and when his weapon malfunctioned he fired single shot recocking each time. He fought until he ran out of ammo, was surrounded and had the hell beat out of him. I did not see any big story about his heroism and we probably never will. Can anyone name him? Probably not but everyone knows Jessica Lynch.
I am all for leaving no soldier behind but we do not get this big a production, nor will we, when males are rescued. We have to make a big deal of it to justify why we have women in these situations.
on August 24, 2005 at 8:51 pm
n. mallory said:
At this point, I’m more likely to believe a paper in the BBC than film provided by the military but that’s the conspiracy theorist in me…and the fact that I worked for the government long enough to know better.
However, I do agree that the whole think was overdone and overhyped. Interestingly, you mention the men from her unit and so does the article. The article commented that the hype from her rescue took away from their deaths. I have to agree.
I also have to agree that if it had been a man, it wouldn’t have been hyped. I recall in high school we had a girl on our soccer team and the boys were told that if anyone from the other team touched her, they’d have to run laps. It’s unfair. I say if we want to be treated as equals and go to war with the boys, then we need to be treated equal.
on August 25, 2005 at 11:11 pm
monkeypup said:
Sigh….
on August 26, 2005 at 12:14 am
Big Dog said:
Well the sad fact is they are not treated as equals. A woman has markedly different physical standards than a man. I had to do more on the physical fitness test than women half my age and if they scored higher than me (easy to do with lower standards) they were deemed more combat ready. Yet, I was able to carry much more weight on my back than most women I served with and could carry it farther.
Women do not belong in front line combat. Lynch’s unit was combat support and they took a wrong turn (not hard to do in the desert) but when you are at war you should be really sure of where you are going.
We had a local news story tonight about the first female military member from Maryland killed in Iraq. They did a good job but it received much more press than when a man dies.
on August 26, 2005 at 12:16 am
Big Dog said:
I have worked for the government for a long time(almost as long as you have been alive). There are rules and secrecy but our history shows it is necessary because too many people talk when they should not.
on August 26, 2005 at 8:57 am
n. mallory said:
That was considered “local” news up here too. I didn’t think it got any more press than the others, but our local news always does a tribute whenever anyone in the New England area is killed in battle.
As for secrecy: I do agree that there is a need for secrecy in some circumstances. However, there’s a difference in necessary secrecy and manipulating the truth for reasons of propoganda.
on August 26, 2005 at 12:24 pm
BadTux said:
This is actually one case where Jessica Lynch herself agrees that the Pentagon lied. “They used me”, she told Diane Sawyer on ABC’s 20/20. “None of that stuff happened.” She says that the hospital staff in Iraq was very kind to her, and that she was not raped, and that the Fedayeen had left days before the staged “rescue”. See, e.g., this story from the Toronto Star.
This all came out years ago. It just shows how slick the Orwellian propagandists of the Bush Administration are when it comes to their Big Lie tactics. They tell the Big Lie, and the Big Lie gets all sorts of attention. The truth comes out a month or two later, and it gets covered by a few newspapers, gets mentioned once or twice on national television, but a year after that, what do people remember, the truth or the Big Lie? Why, the Big Lie, of course!
Some people ask me why I automatically assume that anything stated by a Bush Administration official is a lie or, at least, utterly unrelated to reality, unless there is corroborating evidence or it is embarrasing to the administration. I merely ask them “Where are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?” and point them to the conclusion of the Duelfer Report on the CIA’s web site, which concludes that Saddam had neither WMD nor a program to produce them. At the very least, the Busheviks are utter incompetents who practice faith-based speakifyin’…
Badtux the “Welcome to 1984+21!” Penguin
on August 26, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Big Dog said:
Well now we have an interesting situation. Lynch said she could not remember anything yet she remembers this?
The book about her has a section talking about her medical exam. It says there was anal penetration. I am assuming that a doctor examined her and would know such things (I know they can tell). While it might not have been something human that penetrated, she was nonetheless violated in some fashion.
I do not know about the big lie. I know what was written and I assume since she made the money she had to have input in the book.
Everyone is focusing on what happened at the hospital. I am sure, no I know, her unit did not get ambushed at the hospital so what happened to her before she was taken there. The hospital staff could have taken great care of her but what did the fighters who attacked her convoy do.
Once again, she either remembers or she does not. I would say that an American woman captured in the first Gulf War said rape was just one of the ways they tortured me. So it is not beyond reason that they would do it.
on August 27, 2005 at 8:20 am
n. mallory said:
Exactly. No one is disputing what happened before the hospital, as far as I can tell. However, the questions are about the U.S. fabricating tales of what happened in the hospital.
Obviously the hospital staff is denying the last bit of that. The U.K. and the hospital are suggesting that the U.S. went overboard in the rescue and they are suggesting that the U.S. embellished to make her medical condition worse than it actually was.
I’m not saying it’s absolutely true. I don’t know, but the question is: do you blindly believe what the military and US government tells you or do you question everything, particularly when there is an opposing point-of-view even if it’s something you don’t want to believe?
on January 18, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Pollywogs! » Blog Archive » A little story that has been erased from the interwebs…and then some more… said:
[…] Related, remember Jessica Lynch? I read the Guardian article and remembered thinking "wasn't she rescued in a raid?". "Classic joint operation" must be a codeword for complete bullshit. Propaganda, all of it: and who pays for this shit? You mean my tax money is spent on fucking me over? Amazing, where do I sign up for more? I'm a fucking mushroom, welcome to the shithouse my friends! […]
on April 26, 2007 at 12:43 am
Nick said:
Lies, lies, why do they persecute you all with lies. You are all so tormented and individual.
Wankers.