PFC Lynch was a rear echelon support clerk. How she ended up driving a water truck needs to be questioned.
She "got lost" with her small unit (also made up of personnel who are not in an MOS that describes driving trucks or conducting resupply duties).
SDhe was captured (along with a good number of others, who's fate remains uncertain).
Did she grit her teeth, fire from the hip, engage the enemy with a K-bar? (if I recall...the Army no lnger isues bayonets?)...we'll never really know and there are no eye witnesses (which leaves me to question her heroic endeavours, since they are solely based on her accounts...something that would never justify any "hero" decoration).
Has it occured to anyone here that PFC Lynch (and it's time to stop calling her "the little girl, Jessica", and all of that...we wouldn't call Major "X" by anything other than his rank and name!) may well be being used as a propogarnda item by OUR government? (The "wouds" she received seem to vary from accout to account).
Lastly, PFC Lynch was captive for a week. Capt. Michael Scott Speicher has been POW for nearly 12 years, with numerous live sitings (some as recently as this week), yet our leaders have done nothing to rescue him (and my congressman didn't even recognize his name!)
Yes, all of ur folks in uniform deserve respect, but to place PFC Lynch on a pedestal and relate some very questionable circumstances (that clearly identify some personnel shortcomings when we have a heavy reliance upon reserve forces and rear echelon support troops) makes me rather skeptical...she was captured and WIA...the rest is pure pseculation.
Easy answer...they needed someone to drive the damned truck. EVERYBODY gets a drivers license to operate virtually every vehicle in a unit for EXACTLY this circumstance. You must be a union member to think that someone in the military only does one job. They'll do what it takes to GET THE MISSION ACCOMPLSHED!
Its reasonable to expect the media intends to use this story in the same manner they used the Linda Bray story back in the 90s.
By embellishing Pvt Lynch's actions, if that is what is happening, the media diminishes her actual sacrifice.
The Marines had good intelligence on where PFC Lynch was being held, the layout of the hospital, numbers and locations of guards, etc, etc. See the thread about the Iraqi family that passed that information on.
As for having done nothing to rescue Capt. Speicher ... you know that for a fact, do you? I wasn't aware you got a briefing on each and every operation (military and diplomatic) that has been carried out in the past twelve years. I'm impressed. </sarcasm> Nothing that ultimately worked, perhaps, but to insist that nothing at all has been done is mere speculation. Ugly speculation, at that.