Posted on 04/03/2003 1:34:43 AM PST by kattracks
Tip from Iraqi led to hospital roomJessica was being tortured.
That was the urgent word from an Iraqi man who alerted U.S. troops where to find Pfc. Jessica Lynch - and her injuries seem to bear out the allegation.
Lynch, who was flown to a military hospital in Germany yesterday, had her legs broken, one arm broken and at least one bullet wound, officials said.
The 19-year-old West Virginia private was able to call her parents yesterday for the first time since her rescue Tuesday. She was in good spirits but very hungry, her parents told CNN.
The rescue of Lynch, who was driving a water truck when she went missing after a March 23 ambush in Nassiriya, had added urgency when one of two tips to Americans said she was in danger.
One tip came when an English-speaking Iraqi man approached NBC reporter Kerry Sanders to tell him about the soldier being held captive.
"Please make sure the people in charge know that she's being tortured," he told Sanders.
Belying her country-girl smile and petite 5-foot-5 frame, Lynch put up a Rambo-worthy fight when her unit, the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Co., came under attack, according to a new report.
Lynch opened fire on the Iraqi assailants, picking them off one by one until she ran out of ammunition, according to today's Washington Post.
She continued shooting - even after she was shot and stabbed and her unit members were killed all around her.
"She was fighting to the death," a U.S. official told The Post. "She did not want to be taken alive."
Yesterday, when Lynch was plucked from Saddam Hospital, Special Forces troops found a soldier in pain.
Her broken bones are a sure sign of torture, said Amy Waters Yarsinske, an ex-Navy intelligence officer and an expert on POW treatment.
"It's awfully hard to break both legs and an arm in a truck accident," Yarsinske said.
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's thugs are known to use steel bars to bash their prisoners' limbs, she said.
"In the first gulf action, they tried breaking their [captured U.S. airmen's] legs with steel bars," Yarsinske said.
Another clue that Lynch and other POWs were being tortured came Friday, when Marines raided a hospital near Nassiriya where other members of Lynch's unit were videotaped and later shown on Iraqi TV. Marines found at least one shredded woman's uniform spattered with blood and the name patch torn off. In addition to Lynch, two other female soldiers went missing after the ambush.
In one hospital room, Marines discovered a car battery next to a bed - a possible electrical shock torture chamber.
During the last Persian Gulf War, Iraqis attached wires to one American POW's jaw and shocked him, Yarsinske said.
An Iraqi pharmacist who works at Saddam Hospital told Britain's Sky TV he treated Lynch's leg injuries. He added: "Every day I saw her crying about wanting to go home."
The pharmacist, who gave his name only as Imad, said Lynch knew U.S. troops were on the other side of the Euphrates River, and "kept wondering if the American Army were coming to save her."
Lynch's hometown of Palestine, W.Va., continued its celebration of her recovery yesterday.
Her brother, Gregory Jr., who is also in the Army, told CNN his sister sounded "disoriented" when she phoned home. "Her voice was crackly and low. She sounded like she was sick."
West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise stopped by the Lynch's home yesterday and told her parents that their daughter, who had joined the Army to pay for college so she could become a kindergarten teacher, would not have to worry about tuition.
"There will be a full scholarship for her whenever she wants to go for college," he promised.
With News Wire Services
Besides my moral objection to such a technique, I doubt it would be very useful in such a situation. Torture can serve two purposes, basically: to punish/humiliate (the most popular historical use) and to extract information.
The former can be done by anyone and does not require a particularly skilled operator. If you are torturing simply for the sake of inflicting pain, it process can be as long or as short as you would like it, depending on how much pain the torturer can stand to inflict (as, unless the torturer is a sadist, often difficult to do).
The latter of the two methods is entirely different, though. Torture as a means to extract information is often an extremely lengthy process. Most people can withstand a great deal of physical pain, so torture used to extract information must be a combination of physical AND mental torture techniques--the only way to extract reliable information. Days or weeks certainly wouldn't be out of the question as far as a reasonable time limit here.
An interesting book on the subject, although to my knowledge, out of print, is "Physical Interrogation Techniques," by Richard Krousher.
But nobody died and made me God, so I guess we have to accept women being in combat.
Of course there are things we will do to get information from prisoners with information. Ultimately though, the information is won when their mind is overthrown... and outright causing of pain, or fear of pain, is only the least civilized way to achieve that. I would rather not put interrogators, and the varsity mind games they play, in the same category as sadistic abuse of an enemy out of hatred.
2 weeks is too late. It's called the morning-after pill for a reason. At 2 weeks implantation has already happened and life has begun. I will never be able to understand how anyone who is pro-LIFE can say that it's ok to abort a baby from rape or incest. Life is life, a baby is a baby. I have compassion for the woman who's been raped. She's a victim, but that baby is too. 9 months is not a long time in the grand scheme of things. The babies of rape deserve life just as much as baby conceived by "accident". Why are they less worthy? There is no logical reason for a prolifer to be against abortion but allow exceptions. I know this is not a popular opinion, but it's pretty damned indisputable.
Yeah they sure would if implantation hadn't already happened. Otherwise they simply cause an ABORTION...not a prevented pregnancy.
Hand wringing and expressions of compassion are cheap, when you aren't the one who lives it. All it takes is the movement of your mouth and the exhalation of hot air.
9 months is not a long time in the grand scheme of things.
Nine months is a very significant posrtion of a human life, especially when it is spent carrying the fetus of men who raped you. It represents a full percent of the entirety of most female lives when expressed actuarially, and when you consider that most people have scant recollection of childhood, it looms ever larger in the human psyche. Of course, that never, ever stopped a militant from wringing their hands and flopping their mouths.
Give the girl the space to make her own decisions - if shes pregnant and she aborts, it is none of your business. If she is pregnant and decides on her own to go to term, it is none of your business.
And that is all i'll say on THAT topic.
One of the problems of having females so close to combat is that our enemies see it as a sign of weakness.
Very likely the pain meds they have her on...
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