Posted on 11/07/2003 7:31:52 AM PST by presidio9
Jessica Lynch has angrily accused the Pentagon of using her for propaganda. The 20-year-old private, portrayed as a female Rambo after she was captured by Iraqis during a blazing gun battle, then freed by American troops, told ABC there was no reason for her rescue from an Iraqi hospital to be filmed.
"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Lynch said in an interview with Diane Sawyer that airs Tuesday, Veterans Day.
"Yeah, it's wrong," Lynch said. "I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things" they said.
That footage of U.S. commandos wheeling a grimacing Lynch to a waiting chopper was among the most dramatic of the war - and helped cement her image as a female warrior.
But Lynch said the true heroes were the soldiers who saved her.
"They're the ones that came in to rescue me," she said. "I'm so thankful that they did what they did; they risked their lives. ... They are my heroes."
She also disputed the Pentagon's early version of her capture by Iraqis, which suggested she had heroically defended herself - going down only after firing all her ammo.
Lynch says her M-16 jammed and she never got off a shot.
"My weapon did jam and I did not shoot, not a round, nothing," she said simply.
There was no immediate response from the Pentagon, which awarded Lynch a Purple Heart for her injuries.
ABC released excerpts of Lynch's first television interview yesterday after the Daily News obtained a copy of Lynch's authorized biography and revealed its most shocking secret - that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.
She has no memory of the rape. The book says there was a three-hour gap after her capture, a blank in her mind, during which she was assaulted.
"Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she told Sawyer.
Lynch said she was awakened from her stupor by searing pain.
"I seriously thought I was going to be paralyzed for the rest of my life," she told ABC.
The young soldier said at first she did not trust her Iraqi doctors - and tried to stifle her screams.
Trapped in her bed, Lynch said, she tried to tame her terror by thinking about her family, her fiancé, Sgt. Ruben Contreras, and her G.I. buddy Lori Piestewa.
After she was rescued, she learned Piestewa was dead.
In her book, "I Am a Soldier, Too," author Rick Bragg says the scars on Lynch's body and medical records indicate she was anally raped, and tells the reader to "fill in the blanks of what Jessi lived through on the morning of March 23, 2003."
Lynch says her unit was sent into battle armed only with M-16s - no grenades or anti-tank weapons - and in lumbering trucks that could not keep up with the convoy barreling toward Baghdad.
When the trucks in her unit tried to catch up, radio contact with the main convoy was lost - and so were they.
She was filled with foreboding.
"Jessi's fear of being left behind was beginning to come true," Bragg wrote.
I just don't see any evidence "the brass" put out the wrong story about her or "put her on a pedestal." The Washington Post tried to make her into Rambette. Her fellow soldier who fought hardest was awarded the Silver Star. Her's is a story that captured the attention of the nation - it's nobody's fault. Why blame "the brass" for giving the public information the public wanted? Why isn't the public fawning over her rescuers? Because the public often overlooks soldiers who do nothing more than do their jobs damn well - like right now when the only publicity a soldier can get out of the U.S. press is from dying.
I've seen intellegent people who's brain didn't work at times. A failure to focus on the task at hand does not imply stupidity. A persistent failure to do so is strongly suggestive of it.
"before firing in dusty conditions because of closer tolerances."
Closer tolerances than what? The fitting of the firing pin is tight enough that no sand and dust would build up in the spacing to cause binding. Once cocked and loaded there are no other mechanisms that could get stuck resulting in a failure to fire. If a light hammer blow(dust) resulted in a misfire, it could be immediately cleared. Unless the owner allowed the inside of the reciever to fill with a significant amout of sand and/or dust, the shooter could clear it with one, or a few manual cycles.
"I looks like she is just humbly saying that she shouldn't have been labeled a hero out of respect for those who are the heros."
That could be, but this is the NY Daily News. Are they the liberal media? They said she, "angrily accused the pentagon of using her for propaganda."
Read the article! She never said "The Army used me."...period. They quoted her out of context. The liberals are trying to make it look like it's all the military's fault when it's the fault of the Washington Post.
I don't even know what the h-ll DU is, but there are some vicious s.o.b.'s in this place who would tear to shreds a teenage girl who just returned from the torments of Hell, who was used as an "experiment" on the battlefield by the feminists, is still struggling to walk, and still suffers from memory loss, and who was being used as a pawn by every political agenda and news media outlet for their own selfish gain.
Once these things clear up a bit over time, she will then have to deal with the anal rapes she endured at the hands of smelly Iraqi scum while her limbs were still broken and bleeding. At age nineteen she's had enough pain and nightmarish experiences to last a dozen lifetimes. I look at Jessica Lynch as a victim of feminism, and that includes the feminazis in the Pentagon who are experimenting with women on the battlefied.
Oh yeah! I see you're REAL familiar with our military forces.
NO!! Saying the Army used her by filming the recovery.
I didn't call you angry. And again, you had 4 quotes there but none were as the title. The title is a lie. If I said "My company used me.", that would imply I was angry. If I said "My company used me to promote their latest line of widgets.", that would imply that I was just earning my pay. You can't see the propaganda in the title?
I think you may have misunderstood my comment.
There's that anger again. Tsk tsk.
Having been the first respondent to this thread, and having cited an excerpt from the article, I think by now it's apparent to most but you that I'm quite familiar with the article's content.
Yeah, she is all things to all people that have some agenda to be peeved about.
At the age of 19 she is also not ready for the onslaught of critical attention she has been getting. This woman has been through hell. I don't know if I could have held up as well as she has under the circumstances. She is going to need all the money from the book/movie just to pay for the lawyers and therapists to keep her from going insane over all this!
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