Jessica: Army used me

NY Daily News ^ | November 7, 2003 | CORKY SIEMASZKO

[lelio]

Are there transcripts of Pentagon/Centcom briefings where we have on-the-record accounts of Army/Pentagon officials saying that Jessica Lynch went down fighting?

What about pentagon officials trying to se the record straight then? They didn't go out of their way to say that this heroic figure story was fabricated.

[eastforker]

At the beginning of the article it says that she said there was no need for the rescue and then she says she was so glad they rescued her,anybody else catch that?

[dogbyte12]

She is being honest. Do you expect her to lie and take another one for the team?

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.

[eastforker]

My bad,after rereading I see she meant there was no need to film it,wonder why she thinks that.I wonder who got into her head?

[thiscouldbemoreconfusing]

Certainly a differant way to hype a book, that's for sure.

[Coop]

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.

[eyespysomething]

I will bet the military films a lot of stuff that we never see. I will bet they film almost everything. I will bet they use it for training and after action reports. This one was released for the public.

[KC Burke]

I read it that she said:

"...there was no reason for her rescue from an Iraqi hospital to be filmed"

[PISANO]

Seems only logical to me that this type of rescue or other significant NIGHTIME special operations are FILMED for later "LESSONS LEARNED" review.

[mtbopfuyn]

Yup, I posted back at the beginning of the Jessica hoopla it was going to hit the fan. Still having problems with all the "but it was jammed" stories.

[1riot1ranger]

"With all due respect and gratitude for your service, PFC Lynch, shut the h*$% up!"

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.

[presidio9]

The one thing I get out of all of this is that PFC Lynch is deeply emotionally disturbed, and the media has seized on that and are using it to the advantage of their own agenda. Everybody here needs to keep that in mind.

BTW, this is another reason why women do not belong in combat, but that's another story...

[mattdono]

Ok. So, this is all an elaborate scheme by the U.S. government, including the President, the Pentagon, the Army, etc..

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?

[honeygrl]

"What about pentagon officials trying to se the record straight then? They didn't go out of their way to say that this heroic figure story was fabricated. "

Is it their job to read every newspaper account and then have a press conference to correct all the wrong stories? I don't think so. I *think* they have more important things to do.

[killjoy]

I will bet the military films a lot of stuff that we never see. I will bet they film almost everything. I will bet they use it for training and after action reports. This one was released for the public.

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.

[honeygrl]

"At the beginning of the article it says that she said there was no need for the rescue"

It looks like she was saying there was no need tol FILM the rescue. But she was rescued nonetheless and shouldn't be complaining. She making a lot of money out of this.

[NormB]

Hmm, I never heard about the US Army "using" her, but I did hear something about the Iraqi Military USING her.
We should have left her in that Iraqi Hospital she loved so much. Then Sean Penn could have come visit her.

[GraniteStateConservative]

So, should we expect to see her dissing Bush at the Boston convention next summer?

[Hacksaw]

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?

Her privacy violated??? She was in the US Army, and a POW!

[honeygrl]

Her whole family sucked all that media attention right up. They didn't even attempt to keep things private. The problem here is that she's blaming to wrong people for all the media attention. It's not the pentagon's fault, it's the media and her family's fault.