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.
Her company got lost, her humvee got hit by an RPG, and she crashed into another vehicle, breaking her legs, and her back, she tried to fire her weapon, it was jammed. She wakes up 3 hours later in excruciating pain, and she is being treated by civilian hospital workers who treat her compassionately. She gets rescued, and they videotape it. She finds out her best friend died, people are claiming that she did a rambo, was shot and stabbed, and that a guy she can't recall meeting in the hospital claims that she was being tortured in the hospital.
What do you expect from her? To pretend she is Rambo? To pretend that after suffering, that she thought it was a neat idea for her privacy to be violated by tv cameras being hooked up to Rangers so her rescue could be used for war propaganda? Yeah, she is just an ungrateful little witch.
I expect her not to publicly bash the Army for promoting the very incident from which she is now profiting.
"...there was no reason for her rescue from an Iraqi hospital to be filmed"
couldn't have said it better! I'm sorry it happened, glad she survived, and hope she lives a long, happy life, but I've heard enough about her. Yeah the army used her but she was the one who first used the army. She enlisted for the benefits, never fully considering the payment that the army could demand someday.
Pvt. Lynch, the Pentagon and the Army would (rightly) expect you to fight to the death, so there is no reason for them to think that you wouldn't do that. It doesn't matter that you are in vehicle maintenance or not...you're a solider. Now, initial reports are often (usually) wrong and those doing the briefing that Sunday morning explained that they didn't know all the details. Perhaps someone in the command chain wanted you to have dignity as a soldier (i.e., figthing their heart out)? This wouldn't be some scheme of the Pentagon. This would be one soldier wanted another soldier be portrayed in a dignified light.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Now, that shouldn't (and isn't) the ultimate conclusion of the story.
If Pvt. Lynch says that he weapon jammed, I am sure that the Pentagon believes her. We know that they debriefed her and the official record would reflect her account of the last moments before her capture, including her M-16 jamming.
That initial reports are wrong and those stories reported seem more "romantic" than what actually happened, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Half of the stories about historical events in the "Old West" are WAY over glorified and over dramatized.
Everyone knows about the so-called "Fog of War", which explains PRECISELY why her rescue was filmed. Too many would question what the rescuers did and how it went down.
Was the rescue a really "hot" extraction? Not particularly.
Was it fairly documentary in nature? Yes, in military terms...inlcuding the "Matrix" green nightvision effect.
Was it dramatic? Of course, Pvt Lynch. Many Americans had been praying for your safe return and being able to see your relatively mundane extraction was quite dramatic.
Did the Pentagon use this for some proganda purposes? I don't think so at all. Americans got what they wanted: their prayers answered for a soldier's return. The fact that they got to see it happen was captivating, but the real benefit was that you were coming home.
So, perhaps, you can keep your comments to yourself about "being used".
Doesn't seem to me that the President, Don Rumsfeld, or General Meyers is being paid for the Jessica Lynch story. Are they?
This is correct. US Marine Force Recon films all of their ops in order to review them to figure out what went right/wrong and improve their skills. I am not sure who did the raid, but the other units out there can't be doing things too differently. I am sure the filming was standard operating procedures.
Her privacy violated??? She was in the US Army, and a POW!
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