[Iwo Jima]

Yes, I did see Pfc Miller start to say something about his capture, but I assumed that he wanted to tell about getting beat up. Their pictures after capture looked like they could have been roughed up pretty good.

I haven't seen the Newsweek article you quoted, but I don't give it any credence. If the 507th survivors are to be believed (and why not?), Pfc Lynch was unconcious and did not surrender and was not standing. That article sounds like more gratuitous sensationlism to me.

There are no injuries which Lynch has been said to have sustained which are not explainable by the Humvee accident which the survivors described. Other soldiers have suffered similar injuries in similar accidents in this war, and many died. I don't see how the doctor could say that a broken bone was caused by being hit by a rifle butt as opposed to the accident which we know that she endured. This was not just your ordinary car accident.

When someone is injured as severely as Lynch was in the Humvee accident, it is not at all surprising that she is still recovering and needs to use a wheelchair at times four months later. She has many months if not years of recovery ahead of her, but I am betting that she will fully recover because she is young, strong, motivated, has a good mental outlook, and a strong support system.

I don't sense that you -- unlike others on these Lynch threads -- are stretching to try to reach a conclusion about torture. But I hope and pray that there was no torture, for Lynch's sake as well as others and the armed forces as a whole, and will not believe that there was torture until someone knowledgable says that there was. And, yes, I am defining torture to mean something other than a spontaneous a$$-kicking or a slap -- neither of which are acceptable but not by my definition torture.

[nyconse]

Tell that to the reporter from Canada who died from a beating at the hands of the Iranians. You can't accept the evidence in JL's case(although it came from a special force guy according to the article) because then you might have to admit she does deserve a medal. What surprises me is your total belief in the humanity of the Iraqis who murdered their own people with glee for 30 years.

[jaykay]

"I don't sense that you -- unlike others on these Lynch threads -- are stretching to try to reach a conclusion about torture. But I hope and pray that there was no torture, for Lynch's sake as well as others and the armed forces as a whole, and will not believe that there was torture until someone knowledgable says that there was. And, yes, I am defining torture to mean something other than a spontaneous a$$-kicking or a slap -- neither of which are acceptable but not by my definition torture."

Maybe I am jumping to conclusions. I also hope that she was not tortured, but in my heart I beleive that she was. You will probably say that is just my opinion, but it is not just speculation: it is based on the extensive record of the Iraqis abuse of POWs and political prisoners. Even if all of her major injuries were from the accident, being slapped around regularly while so severly injured sounds pretty torturous to me. Unless you beleive that the man who witnessed her being slapped happened to be on hand for the only slap in her entire 9 day captivity, it was likely a regular practice by her captors.