Posted on 04/05/2003 1:18:38 AM PST by kattracks
Pfc. Jessica Lynch was beaten more severely than first reports indicated, doctors said yesterday.Besides two broken legs and a broken arm, the 19-year-old Army truck driver suffered fractures to her right foot, right ankle and a disk in her spine, and had a gash on her head.
Lynch underwent spinal surgery Thursday to repair the fractured disk that had been pressing painfully on a nerve, doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany reported yesterday.
"The prognosis for her recovery is excellent," said Col. David Rubenstein, the medical center commander.
Officials have refused to say why so many of Lynch's bones were broken, but it's likely she was tortured. An Iraqi man who told the Americans where to find her urged the troops to hurry, saying she was being tortured. He later described a scene where the helpless woman was being slapped by a black-clad member of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's thuggish Fedayeen.
Despite her ordeal, Lynch was in good spirits, asking for turkey, a pair of glasses and a newspaper from her hometown of Palestine, W.Va.
"Her emotional state is extremely good - she's jovial, she's talking with staff," Rubenstein said. He said she was particularly cheered by the pink casts she requested.
She will need "extensive rehabilitative services," he continued, but was expected to recover completely.
She's "a daughter any parent would be proud of," he added.
A friend from her unit is with her and has spoken by telephone with her family, Rubenstein said.
The military also accommodated a request from Lynch, who was being fed intravenously, for solid foods. From her list of favorites, cooks in the hospital kitchen delivered an order of turkey, apple sauce and steamed carrots.
The private has no television in her hospital room, on Rubenstein's orders. And Lynch's father back in the U.S. confirmed that doctors have asked him not to discuss her ordeal with her.
"We will answer her questions when she asks them," Rubenstein said.
Nine of 11 bodies discovered in the raid that freed Lynch are believed to be those of American soldiers. Those bodies were transported yesterday to Dover, Del.
With News Wire Services
Translation: "I don't have any valid points to make so I'll just call you names and act smug."
I'm perfectly comfortable with you calling me names - you lack credibility. Your insults mean nothing.
The grand finale I take it. That was disappointing.
I hope that is true. I would hate to have to think that she went through torture...
In fact many peopel I have talked to about this, say the same thing, that her injuries are consistent with a car/truck accident.
then why do you keep coming back?
...and people can read what you wrote for themselves.
...then maybe they'd have some intelligent discussion or arguments to make instead of name calling.
I don't need to volley with someone who has some kind of issues with half the population.
I don't need to 'volley' with a simple name caller as you have been. You're just reacting emotionally.
The relationship between Jackson and Travolta was perfect. They were partners and dime store philosophers and had something approaching friendship ... but they developed just the right amount of an increasing annoyance with one another. It was an authentic depiction of what happens when two egomaniacal guys who have nothing but work in common are stuck with each other way too long. They are two great actors. The dialogue was over the top as usual for Tarantino, but he's a great director.
Nicely said.
I can't read your reply any further - your ignorance of our rescue operations is clearly showing by your implication that gender played a part or that the numbers were high. There were more people involved in Captain Scott O'Grady's rescue (I personally know this) and our enemies in that circumstance were a lot better equipped, better trained, and better prepared than the Iraqis. Whether we rescue somebody comes down to safety of both the person(s) to be rescued and the rescuing parties - increased political tensions would rank higher than gender if gender was on the list of factors. As an example - we didn't try and rescue the US Navy EP-3 crew that was forced down by China that had three women on it's crew. Captain O'Grady's and PFC Lynch's rescues were very safe compared to pulling something like that off.
Just to educate you a bit on what can go on during rescue operation, I googled a good summary of Captain O'Grady's rescue that a British air cadet (our version of AFJROTC I presume) wrote. It's in RTF format (MS Word/Wordpad would open). It is here. If you can't read RTF format, the Google HTML version is here. It's unclassified of course and so leaves out quite a bit, including some operations conducted by our troops on the ground, but the cadet nailed the gist of it.
Between Captain O'Grady's and PFC Lynch's rescue, you should know that we will do everything we can to rescue our POWs, whether it takes 20 or 500 or 5000 people, if there is a chance of rescuing them safely. We may even have to wait until we are sure it's safe and the rescue forces are ready and conditions are right (I think it was like 5 days in PFC Lynch's case, in Captain O'Grady's it was a few days).
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