Iraqi On CIA Payroll Aided In US POW Lynch Rescue - CNN

Dow Jones News Wire | 4/15/03 | Mark Taylor

[BunnySlippers]

Iraqi On CIA Payroll Aided In US POW Lynch Rescue - CNN

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The rescue of former U.S. prisoner of war Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital was aided by information provided by an Iraqi paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, CNN reported Tuesday.

The Iraqi, who's identity was not provided, carried a concealed video camera and taped entry and exit points as well as the room in which Lynch was held before U.S. soldiers carried out their rescue, CNN reported. Intelligence already had been received pointing to the existence of a U.S. POW at the hospital.

The ensuing rescue was carried out by U.S. Navy SEALS, with protection from U.S. Army Rangers, CNN reported.

Lynch now is recovering from numerous bone fractures and possible gunshot wounds at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center near Washington, D.C.

-By Mark Taylor, Dow Jones Newswires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires 04-15-03 0825ET- - 08 25 AM EDT 04-15-03

[BunnySlippers]

The Iraqi, who's identity was not provided

Any ideas if this could be the Iraqi attorney who helped find her? Maybe he's working for us now?

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[battlecry]

I hate CNN.

[irish_links]

As depraved and fallen as men can be, it is good to be reminded that men also are capable of incredible bravery and goodness. Can any of us say that we would have the level of courage exhibited by this admirable man, whomever he may be? To risk death or dismemberment by hideous torture, perhaps to put one's entire family in peril to save the life of a foreigner?

I think our country owes this brave soul much, both in terms of praise and monetary compensation. As the Muslims say, "God is Great!"

[Wright is right!]

"Any ideas if this could be the Iraqi attorney who helped find her?"

No, the Iraqi attorney was "the other intel" we'd already gotten. The CIA plant is a SECOND man.

Michael

[BunnySlippers]

So the Iraqi attorney came forward ... then the other Iraqi filmed the building.

[jriemer]

CNN is trying to denigrate the bravery of the Iraqi people and the American heros that all risked their lives for one American soldier by associating them with the CIA - an organization that is, in their eyes, the moral equivalent of Saddam's secret police and death squads. This travesty of journalism cannout stand without rebuke!

[Sabertooth]

((((((growl)))))

[Sabertooth]

April 16, 2003

So who really did save Private Jessica?
From Richard Lloyd Parry in al-Nasiriyah
Doctor claims that soldiers terrorised unarmed staff. . .

THE rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the US military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimised the doctors who had struggled to save her life, according to Iraqi witnesses.

Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city.

Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime.

An ambulance driver who tried to carry Private Lynch to the American forces close to the city was shot at by US troops the day before their mission. Far from winning hearts and minds, the US operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked their lives treating both Private Lynch and Iraqi victims of the war. “What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor — it’s a myth,” said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch’s life after she was brought to the hospital by Iraqi military intelligence.

“They said that there was no medical care in Iraq, and that there was a very strong defence of this hospital. But there was no one here apart from doctors and patients, and there was nobody to fire at them.”

Dr Harith was on duty when Private Lynch was brought to al-Nasiriyah general by Iraqi soldiers a few days after her capture on March 23. She was a member of a 15-member US Army maintenance company convoy that was ambushed after taking a wrong turn near the city.

At the time, she was suffering from a head injury, a broken leg and arm, a bullet wound to her leg, a pulmonary oedema and her breathing was failing. In a hospital inundated with war casualties with few drugs, her condition was stabilised and she regained consciousness.

“She was very frightened when she woke up,” Dr Harith, 24, a junior resident at the hospital, said. “She kept saying: ‘Please don’t hurt me, don’t touch me.’ I told her that she was safe, she was in a hospital and that I was a doctor, and I never hurt a patient.”

Private Lynch’s military guards would allow no other doctor to tend to her and Dr Harith formed a friendship with her. She talked to him about her family, including her arguments about money with her father, and about her boyfriend, a Hispanic soldier named Ruben.

Dr Harith went outside the hospital during the bombing to get supplies of Private Lynch’s favourite drink, orange juice, and struggled to persuade her to eat.

“I told her she needed to eat to recover, and I brought her crackers, but her stomach was upset. She said as a joke: ‘I want to be slim.’

“I see (many) patients, but she was special. She’s a very simple person, a soldier, not well-educated. But she was very, very nice, with a lovely face and blonde hair.”

The Iraqi intelligence officers told the hospital that Private Lynch would soon be transferred to Baghdad, a prospect that terrified her.

After her condition stabilised, they ordered Dr Harith to transfer Jessica to another hospital.

Instead he told the ambulance driver to deliver her to one of the American outposts that had already been established on the ouskirts of the city.

“But when he reached their checkpoint, the Americans fired at him,” he said.

On April 1 the local Baathists fled al-Nasiriyah for Baghdad and arrived at the hospital looking for their prize captive. Dr Harith moved her to another part of the hospital, and other doctors told the soldiers that he was away.

“They said that they thought Jessica had died, and they didn’t know where she was,” he said. In their haste and confusion the soldiers left, leaving behind only a few critically injured soldiers.

The American “rescue” operation came on the night of April 2. The hospital was bombarded and soldiers arrived in helicopters and, according to the hospital doctors, in tanks that pulled up outside the hospital.

Most of the doctors fled to the shelter of the radiology department on the first floor.

“We heard them firing and shouting: ‘Go! Go! Go! Go!’ ” Dr Harith said. One group of soldiers dug up the graves of dead US soldiers outside the hospital, while another interrogated doctors about Ali Hassan al-Majid, the senior Baath party figure known as Chemical Ali, who had never been seen there. A third group looked for Private Lynch.

US soldiers videotaped the rescue, but among the many scenes not shown to the press at US Central Command in Doha was one of four doctors who were handcuffed and interrogated, along with two civilian patients, one of whom was immobile and connected to a drip. “They were doctors, with stethoscopes round their necks,” Dr Harith said.

“Even in war, a doctor should not be treated like that.”

Unluckiest of all was Abdul Razaq, one of the hospital administrators, who took shelter from the bombardment in Private Lynch’s room, believing that he would be safe.

He was seized and taken with the US soldiers on their helicopter to their base, where he was held for three days in an open-air prison camp.

“When he left his skin was the colour of yours,” another doctor, Mahmud, said. “When he came back, he was black.”

Bizarrely, the rescuers cut open a special bed, designed for patients with bed sores, which had been provided for Private Lynch’s use.

“They took samples of sand out of it,” Dr Harith said. “It was the only bed like it that we have, the only one in the governorate.”

Today, the hospital struggles on without adequate supplies of drugs and without running water or mains electricity.

“There are two faces to Americans,” Dr Harith said. “One is freedom and democracy, and giving kids sweets. The other is killing and hating my people. So I am very confused. I feel sad because I will never see Jessica again, and I feel happy because she is happy and has gone back to her life. If I could speak to her I would say: ‘Congratulations!’”

Times Online

[Sabertooth]

Iraqi informant videotaped POW's hospital
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - An Iraqi working with American intelligence agencies used a hidden video camera to chart a course to the hospital room of prisoner of war Jessica Lynch, providing critical information before her rescue, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The informant was among several sources who helped the CIA and the military find Lynch, a 19-year-old Army private first class, in a room in Saddam Hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. On April 2, American commandos rescued her from the hospital.

After multiple sources tipped U.S. agencies to her presence at the hospital, an Iraqi lawyer identified only as Mohammed told American Marines he saw Lynch being slapped by a security guard there.

To confirm her location, officials with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military counterpart of the CIA, equipped and trained the Iraqi informant with a concealed video camera.

Officials have refused to identify the informant but said he was not an officer of a U.S. intelligence agency.

On the day of the raid, the informant walked around the hospital, videotaping entrances and a route to Lynch's room, officials said. The Iraqi was paid for his services.

The information allowed American commandos to have a complete picture of the hospital when they went in, officials said.

That night, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and other commandos helicoptered under a moonless sky to the Nasiriyah hospital. While troops engaged Iraqi soldiers in another part of the city, the rescuers entered the hospital and persuaded an Iraqi doctor to lead them to Lynch.

After her rescue, Lynch was treated for her injuries in Germany and was brought Saturday to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where she is recuperating.

Lynch, of Palestine, W.Va., worked as a supply clerk with the Army's 507th Maintenance Co. Her unit was ambushed near Nasiriyah after making a wrong turn on March 23, during early fighting in the invasion of Iraq. Several members of her unit were killed; she was among six who were captured.

Lynch, more badly wounded than the other survivors, was left in the hospital. The five other prisoners of war from her unit were rescued Sunday north of Baghdad.
Associated Press

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[Victoria Delsoul]

The CIA did it, but they have kept quiet until now. An Iraqi spy on the CIA payroll supplied them with a video of the hospital which the CIA had asked him to get.

The ensuing rescue was carried out by U.S. Navy SEALS, with protection from U.S. Army Rangers, CNN reported.

Outstanding job by the CIA and the Armed Forces.

[MeekOneGOP]

bttt . . .

[xm177e2]

Maybe he's working for us now?

Maybe he was working for us all along. That seems to be the suggestion now. Or maybe CNN just wants to piss on the "Iraqi civilian chose to help America" story by passing on crap rumors.

[BunnySlippers]

Maybe he was working for us all along. That seems to be the suggestion now.

I'm not inclined to think he was CIA all along. If so, why tip off who he was, show a photo of him in the media outlets and provide extensive conversational details?

[madison10]

With the revelation that CNN knew all along about Saddam's evil empire, what sort of credibility does the network have? CNN and their ilk are bottom feeders.

[geedee]

Here's another article by Mr. Parry . . .

21:18 2001-10-26

Richard Lloyd Parry (The Independent): Families blown apart, infants dying. The terrible truth of this 'just war'

I just give you the title because his article was just too much bullshit to bother reading. He's writing about Afghanistan and it appears Mr. Parry has never failed to find a conflict where he didn't mind lying just enough so he could blame the U.S.

I might also remind everyone he writes for the same rag as Robert Fisk.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Good article by the Associated Press, Saber. Obviously, it wasn't in the CIA interest to get the truth known right away. Whether it was a diversionary tactic, who knows.

[Sabertooth]

We'll probably be getting the truth in dribs and drabs for a while.