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The madness of saving Jessica (gag)
Evening Standard (U.K.) ^ | 04/08/03 | Brian Sewell

Posted on 04/08/2003 11:38:26 AM PDT by Pokey78

To puke was the only proper reaction to the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, of the US Army's 50th Maintenance Company, as April Fools' Day dawned in Iraq last week. "To puke" has just the right abrupt, dismissive note to it - "to vomit" and "to regurgitate" both have too much Latin gravity at their roots, "to heave" and "to retch" the false gentility of euphemism, but plain puke, good enough for Shakespeare, is onomatopoeic to perfection. Say "puke" and relish the sound.

It is not that I have any ill-will towards the girl - I have none for any young soldier, of any race or religion, engaged in any cause - it is just that I believe women to have no business to be anywhere near the front line in any campaign, other than, perhaps, as doctors and nurses. I am certain that no such effort would have been made to rescue a young man of her age and inexperience.

Jessica Lynch is 19, blonde, 5ft 4in, and weighs rather less than the equipment carried by a British paratrooper on the yomp. Driving across the desert with other US servicemen unable to read a compass or take direction from the sun, she was separated from a convoy, ambushed, injured, captured by Iraqis and taken to a hospital in Nasiriyah, on the Euphrates, nearer Basra than Baghdad.

There she lay, both legs and one arm fractured, attended by the few members of staff who had not fled, a pharmacist the only man of any qualification.

How these injuries occurred we do not know, but General Tommy Franks, commander of the allied forces, knew of them and knew where she was, knowledge attributed to " intelligence" until the truth was revealed - that a sympathetic Iraqi had trudged for miles across the desert until he found a US officer to tell.

General Franks it was who ordered Jessica's rescue, perhaps sharing her family's anxiety over the possibility of rape, perhaps recognising what a propaganda coup could be made of it. To effect the rescue, US marines staged diversionary attacks in Nasiriyah, on a bridge, a telecommunications relay station and the local headquarters of the Ba'ath party; and with these under way, two transport helicopters landed in the hospital grounds, with the protection of four attack helicopters hovering overhead and two patrolling tankbuster aircraft - all this by dead of night, in pitch darkness and with the appalling safety record of US forces.

How many soldiers were involved and at serious risk in this escapade? Six helicopter crews, two aeroplane crews, medics, stretcher-bearers and all the men engaged in the decoy attacks on the other side of the town.

Would so many men and so much expensive machinery have been risked for the rescue of a jar-head marine of 19, a black boy of 19, a homosexual boy of 19 or a poor white boy of 19 from the same incestuous hills of West Virginia among which Jessica was born?

I doubt it. This girl was rescued not because she was a heroine, not because she was brilliantly qualified and not because she was in possession of information and skills that must on no account be betrayed to the enemy.

She was rescued for no other reason than that she is a girl, and the all-American blonde to boot. The rescue of Jessica Lynch was portrayed even in our most sober and sensible broadsheets as an exploit of extraordinary derring-do, of heroism, valour, audacity, chivalry and chutzpah.

Sane men, however, able to assess the risks involved on such a moonless night, must count this rescue a work of sheer insanity, unless those ordering it put into the equation the publicity inevitable with success. Was it done to hearten the male troops?

Again I doubt it, for these, weary, cold by night, sweating by day, now long unshaven and unshowered, stinking with the stale odours of the body, know perfectly well that no attempt would be made to rescue them were they in the same predicament as Private Lynch and through the same incompetence.

"America doesn't leave its heroes behind, it never has, it never will," were the weasel words of a US army spokesman - and to such nonsense the only possible response is "Tell that to the marines." The objective of this cynical exercise was to fortify the folks at home, and there can be no doubt, so deep is the naivety of the provincial American, that the ruse worked.

In West Virginia, Jessica's rescue is attributed not only to the army, but to God in equal measure, God invoked by the power of prayer. It has occurred to none of them that if God had anything to do with it, he would have stayed the hands of Bush and Blair and sent no one into battle.

The point that everyone has overlooked is that Jessica Lynch should not have been sent to Iraq until active hostilities are over.

I don't care a damn what feminists say, the front line is no place for women. It is where men are ripped apart by shells and bullets, where they are incinerated in tanks, the burnt meats of sacrifice, so, to speak, where men lay down their lives for noble sentiments and causes - forgive me, but what bollocks the euphemisms are.

If a soldier's mind is not wholly engaged in battle, he is a risk to himself and his immediate mates - the last thing a soldier needs is a corporal of poetic mind or a philosopher for a sergeant, the one reciting Horace, the other musing on the nobility of man; he needs, instead, mates driven by adrenaline and the unintellectual antidotes to fear that we call courage and exalt as heroism. But the last thing a soldier needs in battle is a woman by his side, her mere presence a diversion from the matter in hand, a tug at his primeval sense of chivalry.

As, from the safety of Central Command, US Brigadier-General Vince Brooks said of Jessica's rescue, "Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen." And so they did, but they should not have been required to do so.

If women feel compelled, in their absurd pursuit of equality, to join the armed forces and cannot, will not, see that in the front line they pose a menace to all men, then the forces must draw the line for them, no matter how great a political incorrectitude it may seem to outsiders.

Women should be the army's clerks, cooks and bottlewashers, its doctors and nurses, its counters of beans and buttons, but never - even though I can imagine nothing more terrifying than a battalion of bearded lesbians - bearers of arms, never frontline soldiers.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 2inchcrowd; cantgetadate; misguided
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To: Pokey78
This article deserves no response to its substance. The Brits can handle their own on this one... We have enough of our own knuckledraggers here for me to worry about.
161 posted on 04/08/2003 12:38:13 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog (May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.)
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To: Zavien Doombringer
Which she knew full and well when she volunteer this could happen. She went to Basic, she held the guns, she knew what they were for. It wasn't a mystery and she accepted it AS HER JOB!!!

All true. I respect her for that just as I respect even man AND woman in the ALL VOLUNTEER military for their commitment.

You make it sound like she is now complaining. I haven't heard any such complaints coming from her or her family. The only thing I have heard is that she is still in mourning over the loss of the others in her unit, one of whom was her best friend.

Have you heard of her complaining?

162 posted on 04/08/2003 12:38:19 PM PDT by Ditto (You are free to form your own opinions, but not your own facts.)
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To: Pokey78

163 posted on 04/08/2003 12:38:25 PM PDT by happydogdesign
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To: Zavien Doombringer
1. Zavien Doombringer
If you spent more time on academics than on playing Dungeons and Dragons, you wouldn't have to teach at an overamped Junior Highschool

2. (If I could get a degree in trivia, I would have my Doctorate!)
If you could get a degree in Round Brown you would definitely have it Piled higher & Deeper

So9

164 posted on 04/08/2003 12:38:42 PM PDT by Servant of the Nine (We are the Hegemon. We can do anything we damned well please.)
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To: doodad; All
Ok I am going to make this quick and to the point......Everyone in here please pipe down a bit with th flaming. I am too angered by the article as a whole and with certain people commenting on certain things in the article.....Taken at a whole the article is disgusting bottom line. What I can agree on in the article and what is being argued currently is should ANY female be anywhere NEAR anyt combat unit be it supply or support role. to this I say NO...NO WAY....Woman are currently not in combat roles not because of the obvious reasons as some point out it is because they are unfortunately a logistical burden. If you do not know what I mean by this then just turn to the once a month thing....(not jabbing here). Furthermore it is fact that women cannot not bathe over a set amount of time. Men such as myself would be subject to training in the field for a month or so at times without access to showering facilities. For women this would be detrimental.
165 posted on 04/08/2003 12:39:00 PM PDT by AbsoluteJustice (Pounding the world like a battering ram. Forging the furnace for the final grand slam!!)
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To: Trailerpark Badass
prove it...
166 posted on 04/08/2003 12:39:02 PM PDT by Zavien Doombringer (If I could get a degree in trivia, I would have my Doctorate!)
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To: dead
Yes, I forgot to bring up Scott O'Grady when I wrote this idiot and his editors. I brought up the two Rangers we lost in Somalia while they were trying to bring back the bodies of fallen comrades.

Here's the address, fellow freepers:

editor@thisislondon.co.uk
167 posted on 04/08/2003 12:39:05 PM PDT by fightinJAG
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To: Pokey78
Silliness. Aside from the efforts at Son Tay in Vietnam there was a successful mission in the Philippines during WWII, chronicled in The Ghost Soldiers. I don't recall anyone checking the gender, race, or sexual preference of those on whose behalf the missions were executed. You simply do not leave people behind if you can help it, and for the author to turn this into a political issue incorporating those nonexistent factors is simply to tell the world that he is ignorant of these matters.
168 posted on 04/08/2003 12:39:18 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: DonQ
This is what I could find to email this creep.

Editorial Got a general query or issue with This is London? Email our editor at editor@thisislondon.co.uk

169 posted on 04/08/2003 12:40:04 PM PDT by CroftonFreeper (Britan needs parking. Pave France.)
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To: deJaz; Pokey78
deJaz, he was just the poster of the article, he put a gag alert on it, he/she does not agree with the article! Now go apologize! :-)
170 posted on 04/08/2003 12:40:14 PM PDT by countrydummy
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To: Zavien Doombringer
To: johnb838

You are so ignorant...why do you think that when you go through basic you are given the creed "I am an American Fighting Man..." Because in the event of capture, you are told in advance that you may not be rescued and you have to try to escape by any means possible if until you are liberated. Give me a break, obviously you have never "been there"

147 posted on 04/08/2003 2:35 PM CDT by Zavien Doombringer (If I could get a degree in trivia, I would have my Doctorate!)

What do you think, Poohbah?

171 posted on 04/08/2003 12:40:20 PM PDT by stands2reason
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To: Ditto
It's not her complaining, it's the selfserving voices speaking for her
172 posted on 04/08/2003 12:40:34 PM PDT by Zavien Doombringer (If I could get a degree in trivia, I would have my Doctorate!)
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To: fightinJAG
Okay, now you've done it.

Where is this guy's email? >>>>>

editor@thisislondon.co.uk

Here's my effort

To the Editor:

Brian Sewell should keep his "puke" to himself, and it should not be presented as informed opinion. He claims that the only reason Jessica Lynch was rescued is her gender and youth. That's an amazing feat of mind-reading there! Or perhaps his entire column is a pile of uninformed and baseless speculation, steeped in bitterness and hatred.

First he gets the Unit number wrong (it's the 507th, not the 50th), and he finishes by saying that women should not be frontline soldiers. I agree. She was not a fromtline soldier. She was in a Maintenance Unit that took a wrong turn. Between those blunders, he asks loaded questions and creates answers from his own demented imagination, injecting socio-poitical issues of race, gender and sexual orientation.

Perhaps Mr. Sewell should stick to being an art critic, there's plenty of puke and dung being passed off as art that he can review.
173 posted on 04/08/2003 12:42:19 PM PDT by GeorgiaYankee
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To: fred flinch
Please remove the caps lock. You're shouting is hurting my EYES!!!
174 posted on 04/08/2003 12:42:30 PM PDT by stands2reason
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To: Servant of the Nine
1. Zavien Doombringer If you spent more time on academics than on playing Dungeons and Dragons, you wouldn't have to teach at an overamped Junior Highschool

Never played...

175 posted on 04/08/2003 12:43:23 PM PDT by Zavien Doombringer (If I could get a degree in trivia, I would have my Doctorate!)
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Okay, folks, can we de-flame?

I objected to the tone and the sarcastic, deliberately insulting method of delivery. We could debtate all day long the merits of women in combat but right or wrong the author came across as a total butthead. I'm too ticked off right now to come up with a better adjective for him and besides I don't want to get banned.
176 posted on 04/08/2003 12:44:12 PM PDT by Not A Snowbird (USMC Retired - 21 years)
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To: countrydummy
No, he is a college perfessor.

Just ask him.

177 posted on 04/08/2003 12:44:49 PM PDT by sauropod (I'm a man... But I can change... If I have to.... I guess...................)
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To: stands2reason
Hmm.. yeah, I guess you're right.... hadn't thought about that possibility.
178 posted on 04/08/2003 12:45:44 PM PDT by In The Defense of Liberty (Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.)
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To: Poohbah
I meant to include you in post #171.
179 posted on 04/08/2003 12:46:46 PM PDT by stands2reason
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To: E Rocc
This Brit doesn't know his butt from his mouth
Somehow I suspect that they are used interchangeably.
-Eric

That could explain their teeth.

So9

180 posted on 04/08/2003 12:47:15 PM PDT by Servant of the Nine (We are the Hegemon. We can do anything we damned well please.)
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