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.
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.
I won't quibble with your characterization of FNC as conservative. But where's the other one?
Very well said, Crusader, I am with you.
My sentiments exactly.
The Pentagon and the Press most definitely DID use her.
Why do young girls from poor towns in West Virginia have to join the Army to provide for themselves?
I'll be the first to tell you the Army is capable of serious screw-ups, but I'm enough of a loyalist to get my back up over this constant lying crap about the Army "using" or "abusing" her.
Just what did this Army "abuse" consist of? That they released the ops tape of her rescue when millions of us were praying for her and wondering every single day what happened to Jessica and Shoshana and Laurie?
--Army vet, Army dad.
Kind of amazing to me, the way some people turn on her when she won't parrot the party line. I guess "support the troops" only applies to those of the correct political affiliation.