Posted on 11/08/2003 10:15:03 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
Book: Lynch Struggled With Iraqi Doctors
NEW YORK - Former prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch screamed and struggled with Iraqi doctors trying to anesthetize her after one of them said they were going to amputate her leg, according to newly released excerpts from her soon-to-be-released authorized biography.
The surgery never took place, and Lynch later heard that it was planned so she could be taken more easily to Baghdad, "probably for a propaganda video," according to excerpts of "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" being published Monday in Time magazine. The book will be released Tuesday.
The excerpts also say hospital workers wanted U.S. forces to find her in the days before her April 1 rescue, and even moved her bed within sight of an American soldier a doctor had spotted on a nearby rooftop.
Previously released excerpts of the book, written by former New York Times reporter Rick Bragg, said medical reports indicate Lynch was raped in the hours after her 507th Maintenance Company convoy was attacked March 23, although she has no memory of the assault.
Lynch, who suffered broken bones and other injuries, says she came to on a hospital bed, her body so broken she "felt like I was chained to the bed," even though nothing was holding her down.
The 20-year-old says in the book that no one in Saddam Hussein General Hospital beat or interrogated her, although Iraqi men she did not believe were doctors came into her room and stared down at her as they spoke to her caregivers.
Lynch was in an operating room when a doctor said, "We are going to have to amputate your leg."
"They lifted her onto the table," Bragg wrote. "No! Don't! she screamed. A nurse tried to cover her face with a mask. She fought. She whipped her head from side to side, to keep them from clamping the mask down on her nose and mouth. It slipped from her face again and again, and all the time, an unseen child screamed and screamed. Jessi screamed with him as the nurse tried to put her to sleep. Stop, she heard one of the doctors say. The nurse lifted the mask from her face. Don't do it, the doctor said. The nurse put the mask down and walked away."
Lynch heard later that doctors tried to cut off her leg to transport her to Baghdad, although Bragg wrote that she doesn't know whether that report was true. She was told that "her pieced-together legs would be too cumbersome and could become infected if Iraqi soldiers tried to transport her by ambulance," Bragg wrote.
Lynch continues to recover at her home in rural West Virginia.
In an ABC interview to air Tuesday, she accused the military of using her capture and rescue to sway public support for the war in Iraq.
How grateful. They saved her and she resents it.
$um hero
The poor girl doesnt realize that it was the media that used her not the military. She seems to forget who she gave allegiance to.
And who do you think was feeding the information about the incident to the media through off the record sources for their own propaganda purposes?
I'll give you a hint-they salute each other a lot.
Is any story about Jessica Lynch ever true?
Does anyone find that a rather funny turn of phrase - cut off her leg to send her to Baghdad.
Is anyone allowed to go to Baghdad with two legs?
She did not say that.
She expressed a dislike of the way lies were told about the incident for propaganda purposes.
Some people on this forum are now attacking her because she is honest and naive enough to still care about the truth.
I know damn well that the military gave tons of video to the media and that they culled through it first, and who do you suppose culled through it last?
I'll give ya a hint you usually only see thier heads.
Responding to questions that the military may have exaggerated the danger of her nighttime rescue from a Nasiriya hospital by U.S. commandos, she said, "Yeah, I don't think it happened quite like that."
However, she also said that anyone "in that kind of situation would obviously go in with force, not knowing who was on the other side of the door."
Ex-POW calls rescuers 'heroes'
Lynch, 20, a former private first class from Palestine, West Virginia, who has since left the Army, said the way the military publicized her rescue also bothers her, including the filming of it.
"It does [bother me] that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," she said. "It's wrong.
"I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things they [say], you know. ... All I know was that I was in that hospital hurting. ... I needed help. I wanted out of there. It didn't matter to me if they would have come in shirts and blank guns; it wouldn't have mattered to me. I wanted out of there."
But Lynch said she considers her rescuers "my heroes." "I'm so thankful that they did what they did. They risked their lives."
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