[NMFXSTC]

(Ok...hold off...I'm not gonna get into a P***in' contest...just poiting out the facts, Patty)

"Hospital officials say they are not sure how much Private Lynch remembers.

Initial media reports portrayed Lynch as holding off ambushing Iraqis until she'd emptied her weapons. "We don't know" if that's true, said Shaw. "From what I heard, I think she is one of those people who maybe does not remember. We don't know if she was conscious during that whole ordeal."

It was only after performing surgery from compound fractures in her right arm and left leg that doctors realized that she might have been hit by small caliber gunfire, although Shaw said no bullets or metal fragments were found."

So...if she doesn't remember, and there are no bullet wounds (looks like the docs did a cool job of side-steppng the issue), then where did all of the heroine accounts, Medal of Honor nonsense come from?

I'm sure PFC Lynch has a story...she was a POW, so take nothing from that, but making her an Audie Murphy just doesn't cut it.

[patriciaruth]

First, we don't know where the story came from about PFC Lynch firing her weapon when the convoy was ambushed.

I mentioned in the post above, in answer to IwoJimaDaughter's question, that the story might have come from a couple of our wounded survivors of the ambush that were rescued later by Marines.

Evidentally a couple were severely wounded, and may have been in no shape to say anything, but at least one of them was apparently talking after he was rescued.

Now, I have a question for you that I would like you to answer honestly.

If these media reports had been about a male soldier who had been apparently tortured and rescued from the clutches of the Fedayeen, and someone had said that he had emptied his clip in the fight and maybe shot a couple of attackers and had been wounded, would there have been people jumping all over that information and saying it was "b**ls**t" and couldn't possibly be true and "he was the guy that got them lost in the first place" and "he's a whimpering and crying little boy who needs to be home with his mommy."

Seriously, NMFXer, like when Scott was shot down behind enemy lines and managed to evade and escape, was there a thread at FR disrespecting him and saying he was a liar?

What a lot of people haven't seemed to understand about me is that I have been a big military supporter, sending care packages for over a decade, and am a member of AUSA, and have gone to rallies to support the troops, and have a prayer thread for the troops. My foster father died taking a plane off the Saratoga while they were patrolling Libya in 1965. Yes, I feel very attached to all our guys and gals in harm's way and I am going to come out swinging when people imply before THEY have the facts that any one of our service members is not wonderful.

I am so proud of our people and have been so worried for weeks, and it is personal with me, not just an academic exercise, when people start saying nasty things about any of them.

You will not find one post from me where I said "Give her the Congressional Medal of Honor" so don't imply that I have compared her to Audie Murphy once. But someone who has suffered the injuries she has [whether or not she has wounds where the bullet(s) exited is beside the point, in my opinion, she has suffered grievously] and if a man had been rescued with these injuries, and endured enough to say proudly on rescue, "I'm an American soldier, too." I would be proud of him, too. And that was my original comment: Proud to be an American! And I think anyone who isn't proud of Private Lynch is just meanspirited.