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.
With all due respect and gratitude for your service, PFC Lynch, shut the h*$% up!
So, in your opinion, it's ok for the Government to lie to it's citizens as long as someone benefits financially.
She is a survivor of a nightmare. Then she comes back to the USA to be confronted with bizzarro world Media accounts.
I think this is whole thing is sad.
Stop by to learn more about and support Lt. Col. Allen B. West I spoke to him last night and his lawyer will be sending more information that will soon be posted.
Dissing that Iraqi was unforgivable...fact is, the "doctors" weren't able to communicate with coalition forces, and that Iraqi guy had to earn the trust of the Americans by returning repeatedly to the hospital to gather intel.
Got to cut her some slack, though...the pain and all.
But, still...
Sawyer and the other America-hating lefties are perhaps twisting Jessica's words against her, selectively editing what she says and taking statements out of context. I think this quote shows that.
When you are a soldier, privacy isn't an issue. The U.S. government has a responsibility to capture indcidents on the battlefield accurately. There are teams of military personnel that are charged with deciphering what happened on the battlefield and this certainly (maybe most especially) extends to the rescue of a soldier. The film provided as precise a record of the rescue as possible..
Also, you said that her back was broken at the wreck, but Private Lynch admits that she tried to fire her M-16 but it jammed. If she did try to fight with a broken back, wouldn't that be, at least, valiant?
Is it Rambo? No, but it would certainly explain why the initial reports had her fighting valiantly. One, because it is what a soldier does and, two, she did try to fight, but her weapon jammed.
Very interesting opinion you've assigned to me, considering my comment was directed at her "using me" statement.
Let's just look at some of the facts. Lynch is a teenage girl who joins the Army so she can take advantage of the GI Bill and get some schooling later on. She gets sent to the front of the Iraq war and gets all torn up in an accident, and then gets captured by the smelly camel-jocky barbarians and raped. They treat her severe injuries in a "hospital" that couldn't pass for a skid row outhouse in America. She has shattered bones and injuries that put her in excruciating pain and will leave her partially disabled for life.
The real heros, (Special Forces and Marines), show up and rescue her.
Now she lies on a hospital bed in Germany, still in a stupor. Meanwhile, certain powers and forces back home want to use her for their own personal gain. The feminists want to make into an American icon, a female "David" who slayed the Iraqi "Goliath". The liberal media want to use her for essentially the same purposes, and to sell newspapers. ALL the media, including conservative t.v. networks like FOX, invade her hometown neighborhood and set up a three ring circus of cameras, lights, microphones and talking heads to try get an interview with her family. All the while she lays in a hospital bed in Germany slowly recovering from the severe physical and emotional trauma she had been subjected to. An Army spokesman reveals that Jessica cannot remember much of the trauma, and that it will be weeks before she can even get up and try to walk around.
Months later Jessica finally heals enough to walk and talk and answer questions by the newshounds and those with a personal agenda. She has the chance of a lifetime to become a national hero, (and rich), if she just plays their game. But Jessica also knows that she is being used as a political football, a "thing", by all sides, for their own gain. She's still just a kid, mind you, trying to make sense of it all, trying to decide what to do. Here is where she becomes a hero in my mind. She decides not to play the game of Wonder Woman and reveals that she never even fired her weapon. She admits that her rescuers were the real heros of this story. She doesn't want ANYONE, not the media, not the feminists, not even the Army to say or indicate things that would maker her out to be a hero. She just wants to be Jessica Lynch, a cute little blonde girl from W. Virginia. She wants to get on with her life and get back to normal. She knows this will never happen. Thank you, Jessica Lynch for your service and for being so honest and humble. I am sorry that people on all sides of this story want to use for their personal gain, or to trash you for not being what they want you to be, and for not saying what they want you to say. You are indeed brave, and you are in my prayers.
And what does that have to do with quotes by her and excerpts from her book? Sometimes the messenger doesn't matter. Like now.
MM
No it's not their job to read every news story. However, this was not some remote obscure story. It is a well known story, shown on television through night scope. You would have to be hiding under a rock not to know it.
It made for good PR and the military let it stand.
This story was also used on Fox frequently. They are just as complicit.
and people are drawing conclusions from it as if it were gospel.
However, in her effort to deflect the praise of being a hero, she necessarily made it out like the Pentagon had some elaborate plan to "use" her and her rescue.
And that's just wrong for her to do.
In fact, one could argue that her statements about not knowing "why they would film [the rescue]" gives an impression that they didn't need to film the rescue. The comments suggests somehow that the rescue was "staged" (or some other word that denigrates what those Special Forces and Marines did).
That is an insult to those brave men that rescued her.
[Aside: Think about who she means when she says "they". She isn't talking about her rescuers, she is referring to the Pentagon and military commanders, etc.]
That's why I suggested in this post that she keep her comments to herself. If she wants to be humble and deflect praise, fine. But, don't deflect that praise at someone else's expense.
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