Jessica Lynch Week

SISTERS IN ARMS In the Lynch case, cute, blonde, young, and single is what counts. It meant no one had to tell unpleasant stories about a single mom leaving children behind to go to war. In the NBC movie Lynch's best friend, single mom Lori Piestewa, who is later killed, has taped pictures of her two young children to the dashboard of the truck she is driving. (Somehow that doesn't sound like a Hollywood gimmick. It rings true with every mom I know. ) This is who we are deliberately and unnecessarily sending into harm's way? Single moms with pictures of their young children taped inside their army trucks? NBC probably didn't realize the ugly questions they were raising with that depiction.

Or what about single mom Casaundra Grant, who lost her legs in Iraq after they were pinned under a tank? Who has even heard of her? Where is the Shoshana Johnson story, also a POW, later rescued, and a single mom with little ones? Even Hollywood knows that the "single-warrior-mom-with-little-kids" angle just doesn't quite sit right with mainstream America.

No kidding. An early CNBC news report cited Iraqi eyewitnesses saying they saw Lynch being tortured. But, when the New York Post online quoted that report the next day, the "torture" line was gone. Americans just don't want to hear about it.

But because Lynch avoided some of those unpleasantries, her story was easy. Lynch says the army used her to promote the war. Wrong. Feminists, more than anyone, used it to advance their "I-am-woman-hear-me-roar" and "I-can-do-anything-better-than-you" mentality.

More specifically, feminists, well represented within the military establishment itself, used her story to advance their cause of integrating women deeper into the frontlines of combat. In fact, the capture of American women by Iraqis was hailed by American feminists as a major advance for the gentler sex. Before POW Shoshana Johnson was even rescued, the New York Times praised her in an editorial for helping to break the "glass ceiling" of women in the military. They concluded her capture proved women could and should be put into even more dangerous combat positions. What?

After Lynch's rape revelation, I heard one feminist commentator claim that as awful as it is, it should not be used to keep women from serving in the frontlines of America's military. Why the heck not? As Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, points out, "women face a greater risk than do men of brutality, including rape, if they are captured by the enemy." This is not rocket science. Has anybody heard the term "raping and pillaging" used in warfare before? Yes, if the Fedayeen are coming up my driveway, my daughters and I will fight them to the end. But the notion that we would deliberately, and unnecessarily, be put in their crosshairs is not an idea a civilized nation should tolerate.

But it is being tolerated — even promoted and celebrated. And that may be, more than anything else, what Jessica Lynch Week is all about.

A mother fights to learn details of her son's death

ANDREW KRAMER

Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. - Believing her son's heroics have been mistaken for those of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, an Oregon mother has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn details of his death at the hands of Iraqi soldiers.

Arlene Walters said she believes her son, Sgt. Donald Walters, fought alone on a dusty street in Nasiriyah until he was overrun, shot and stabbed to death on March 23, in the same battle that injured Lynch.

Walters, 66, filed the request for documents or interview transcripts that contributed to a 15-page Army report on the ambush released in July.

"He stayed out there and gave up his life for his country," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Salem.

"I want him to have credit for it. I want them to say, 'yeah, that was Donald Walters out there,'" she said.

Her questions about Donald Walters' death have gone unanswered, she said, although she believes details of how he went down shooting were earlier leaked by the U.S. military and erroneously described as a heroic stand by Lynch. Lynch has since said she did not fire a shot.

The Army has not intentionally withheld details of Walters' death, said spokeswoman Jean Offutt at Fort Bliss, Texas, where the 507th Maintenance Company was based.

"The fact is, nobody really knows," how Walters died, she said. "You can't say something is true unless you have a reliable eyewitness."

Arlene Walters said the autopsy of her son led her to believe he had been mistaken for Lynch. Donald Walters died from gunshots and two stab wounds to the abdomen, his mother said. Lynch was initially said to have gone down shooting and to have suffered stab wounds.

Arlene Walters said Sgt. Major David Seibel at Fort Bliss acknowledged in private telephone conversations that the Lynch reports may have been based on information about her son.

He said, however, that because there were no American witnesses to his death, the military cannot be certain and cannot issue a formal report, according to Arlene Walters.

"All they kept saying was 'ma'am, we don't have an American witness to what went on," said Arlene Walters, a retired typist.

A telephone request to speak with Seibel was not immediately answered Wednesday.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Curry in Washington said he did not know specifically what Walters' family was told.

"It's Army policy to present as much detail as possible to next of kin, so they get the official word rather than hear it from the media," he said.

Donald Walters was a passenger in a supply truck that was the first in the convoy to be disabled, according to the Army report on the ambush that killed 11 American soldiers and left six as captives in the opening days of the war last spring.

Another truck, a water carrier, pulled alongside. Pvt. Brandon Sloan climbed into that truck, but Walters remained behind on the dirt road, the Army report said. He was alone and swarmed by Iraqi attackers, but apparently did not surrender.

"There is some information to suggest that a U.S. soldier that could have been Walters fought his way south on Highway 16 toward the canal and was killed in action," the Army report said.

In the Freedom of Information Act request, Arlene Walters asked for the source of that information, because Army officials have said no U.S. soldiers saw Walters after he was left on the street.

Walters said she filled out a form she downloaded from an American Civil Liberties Union Web site and mailed it to several military addresses. One copy was returned as improperly addressed, she said.

Offutt, the Fort Bliss spokeswoman, said the information may have come from an Iraqi source, such as a fighter who witnessed the battle and was later captured by U.S. forces.

She said no one has officially said that Donald Walters and Lynch maybe have been confused for one another.

Arlene Walters lives with her husband Norman in a one-story house with a flag pole in the front yard. She said she has a gold star in her window with her son's name on it.

She said she is angered that the military released information gleaned from Iraqi sources to the public - to provide alleged details of Jessica Lynch's ordeal - but will not release what she believes is the same information to a mother about her son's death.

There are two discussion here.

One is whether women should be in combat roles.
I oppose women in combat roles. The reason includes unit cohesiveness, pregnancy disability/sexual activity, and also lack of upper body strength. By blurring the differences of the sexes, we ignore reality

The second discussion is whether women should be allowed in support roles. I support this.

these women weren't in combat roles. They were in support roles.

Women in support roles in war have a long history. Campfollowers today imply prostitutes, but in every war in history, women followed wars to do laundry, cook, and nurse. And sometimes these women were killed or had to fight back. Women were in Bataan. One spanish wife with Cortez fought back when her group was attacked by Aztecs. One of Mohammed's wives went with his army to nurse, and ended up fighting along side her husband. Usually these people are not mentioned in the books, but sometimes you see mention in passing about their presence.

modern war tactics include guerilla attacks to the support troops.

When I was in National Guard in the 1980's, we were told our medical unit was supposed to be 200 miles behind the lines, but that we should expect attacks by NBC and guerilla type troops should war break out and we were mobilized.

Unless we eliminate women from all positions in the armed services, you will have women casualties. But I doubt any army will do this.

CyberAlert, Media Research Center, November 12, 2003

CNN’s Zahn Tries to Ascribe Anti-Pentagon Views to Jessica Lynch

CNN’s Paula Zahn attempted and failed to put anti-Pentagon talking points in former POW Jessica Lynch’s mouth. During the Monday night edition of Paula Zahn Now, she proposed to Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs, who was on to discuss her interview with Lynch featured in the November 17 issue of the magazine: “She feels quite used by the U.S. government, does she not?" When Gibbs rejected the characterization, Zahn remained undeterred and issued another claim which Gibbs undermined. Zahn maintained that Lynch “has also made it quite clear she's resentful” of how imagery of her rescue was used “to support the war effort."

For Gibbs’ interview with Lynch in Time: www.time.com

[MRC analyst Ken Shepherd submitted a draft of this item for CyberAlert]

Zahn started out by asking if Lynch had cleared up any misconceptions in their interview: "What did you learn from spending time with the family that we didn't know before? Any misconceptions cleared up?"

Gibbs replied: "There are a lot. There's one that I think she's really intent on clearing up, which is one that has caused her some pain, the whole story we heard of the sort of Rambo warrior who went down fighting, fired off all her ammunition, fought to the death. She's brutally honest that that bears no resemblance to what she did."

Seizing on this Zahn prodded: "And she feels quite used by the U.S. government, does she not?"

Gibbs clarified: "What she feels bad about is that people came away with an impression that she was something other than she was. She said, you know: 'I didn't fire my weapon. It jammed. I couldn't do anything to defend my comrades.’ Everyone else who was in that Humvee with her the day it was ambushed died. She's the only one who survived. And it's very painful for her to have discovered when she came back that she was getting credit as being some great heroine or great warrior who had fought so fiercely, when she didn't. I think she's quite determined to set that record straight."

Zahn then insisted: "She has also made it quite clear she's resentful of the fact, is she not, that this imagery was somehow used to -- I guess, she has alleged, to support the war effort?"

Gibbs corrected Zahn: "I think that may be going too far. There's nothing she said in all the time we spent with her that was negative about anything other than the very specific intelligence reports about the role that she had played. She views the Army and she views particularly the guys who came in and retrieved her from the hospital as her heroes. She says the idea that this was staged or this was phony or this was all for propaganda is crazy: They got me out. And she is so thankful that they did. And that's the other thing I think that she wants to make clear. All the reports that -- we asked her, did you hear reports that maybe that rescue wasn't what it seemed to be? And she said: 'I was there. I know what happened. And those guys are heroes.’"

That popping sound you hear is Zahn’s bubble bursting.

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