USING Jessica Lynch

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Jessica Lynch

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 26, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Jessica Lynch recently was awarded a Bronze Star Medal, a Purple Heart and the POW Medal. The BSM citation reads: "For exemplary courage under fire during combat operations to liberate Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Private First Class Lynch's bravery and heart persevered while surviving in the ambush and captivity in An Nasiriya."

The Army's official After-Action Report said she was in a vehicle that crashed while hauling butt trying to escape an enemy ambush. She was knocked unconscious and woke up at a nearby Iraqi hospital receiving special attention from some super-caring Iraqi doctors and nurses.

This was probably the first incident in U.S. military history in which an American soldier was awarded our country's fourth-highest ground-fighting award for being conked out and off the air throughout a fight.

BSMs citing bravery typically read: "Moving his machine gun to a forward vantage point, he covered the advance of the infantry with a heavy volume of effective fire. Repeatedly exposing himself to a devastating small-arms automatic weapons and mortar barrage ..." Or: "He voluntarily acted as point man and ... when the platoon was fired upon ... charged the enemy position ... Through his courage, determination and devotion to duty, he saved his patrol from suffering casualties and captured a prisoner who later provided important information."

It's no big surprise that I've been bombarded by thousands of angry e-mails from vets protesting this assault on our country's sacred award system.

"She wasn't wounded in action, nor did she do anything to deserve a Bronze Star," writes Arch McNeill. "We have hundreds of valiant soldiers here in the 3rd Division who far more deserve more than she received but in many cases didn't receive anything."

"I'm going to send all my awards back to the president and tell him where he can shove them," says a genuine war hero, Jack Speed, a former Army Raider.

So I rang the Pentagon and asked Col. Jeff Keane, "Why the bravery bit?" Finally, when the standard Army propaganda drill wasn't going down, Keane told me, " It was for her bravery in the hospital."

But all this flimflam wasn't Jessica's doing. She was used right from the first – a frail prop in the Pentagon's public-relations campaign to sell the war to the American people and to encourage their daughters to join up and be heroes.

To keep the truth under wraps, the Army concocted another whopper: "She suffers from amnesia."

A senior officer from V Corps (the unit that eventually awarded her the BSM), who has asked to remain anonymous, comments that there was "tremendous pressure right from the get-go to award Pvt. Lynch a Silver Star. But the high brass here concluded, 'There was no evidence of heroism on her part,' and told the pushers to back off."

But when the propagandists conned the highly respected Washington Post into reporting on how Lynch was shot and stabbed but continued to kill Iraqis until her last round was spent, heroic stuff that would make Audie Murphy look like a slacker – which the Post then took several months to correct – other media were fast to pick up the fairy tale, and the Army was besieged by proud Americans demanding that Jessica be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Of course, many of us now know that a high-priced flack in Tommy Frank's headquarters came up with this tall tale and then duped the Post.

According to retired Marine Lt. Col. Roger Charles: "There's nothing they won't stoop to spin. The Army needed a female hero to boost female recruiting and PR efforts, so they went and invented one."

And that's the root of the problem. The elevation of Jessica to Joan of Arc status is to recruit more women, even though thousands of female soldiers couldn't deploy with their units to Iraq because of pregnancy, no sitters for single moms' multiple kids and other problems.

And poor Jessica Lynch has become the unwitting poster girl for an Army of One that's fast becoming an Army of Two – since apparently more than half of the women deployed to Iraq are now pregnant.

Your posts since this issue came out have centered on Jessica's undeservedness.

First it was her looks saying she was in her position because she's was pretty.

Then you said she didn't deserve a CMOH and you harped on it for months even though there was never any consideration to give her a CMOH.

Then when she got her Bronze Star you spent a whole thread collecting statistics of how Bronze Stars are awarded to find something to complain about but upon finding that Bronze Stars are awarded for much less didn't have an issue.

Now it's the media attention saying she doesn't deserve media attention.

I think there's no doubt that from the beginning you've just looked for excuses to say she's undeserving of one thing or another. I would think that as a conservative, you could leave the nitpicking to the military-loathing liberals and celebrate the rescue of a POW and spend more time commending her of her sacrifices for all of us than looking under every rock to find something to put her down for.

You are really despicable, you know that? You are so obsessed with Lynch that you have entirely misrepresented my opinions, so that you can defend her from some non-existent attack.

Where have I misrepresented you? If you can point to a lie, I'd like to see it. I'm simply sticking up for a member of our military. Isn't that what conservatives should do?

I was warned about you and your thread-stalking routine the first time I encountered you, and the person who warned me was absolutely right.

Thread-stalking? You've been on as many of these Jessica threads as I have.

You are crazy, and you are obsessed. I never initiate a conversation with you.

Because I'm not the one attacking the military so you have no reason to respond to me. If I spent week after week saying Iwo Jima vets don't deserve this or that always focusing on the negative like you do with this POW, I guarantee you'd be initiating conversation with me every time.

You seek me out so you can act out your weird little "Jessica" routine, going so far as to lie so you have something to whine about.

Again where have I lied? Your posts have focussed on what Jessica has been undeserving of from the beginning from medals to attention to media productions. Always nitpicking on her.

I don't care what you say to me, or about me. I'm going on record to say this is my very last correspondence with you. You are scary weird, and you need help. I will pray for Jessica Lynch that you never get within a hundred miles of her.

Why would I want to get near her? You're assuming things. She's not my type. I'm not into tomboys (not that she is one, but I consider military women, police women, etc., to be little bit of tomboys). I like women more like a Buttercup (in Princess Bride) than like a Xena, so you're dead wrong on why I defend her. I defend Chelsea too and liberal female New Yorkers are definitely not my type. We are on this site because we believe in right and wrong, it's what makes us conservatives and Republicans. Defending our military is right, especially a member of the military that has been through so much. We should applaud her for surviving, not nitpick her on anything we can find. Military personel should know that Republicans are their friends since they are putting their butts on the line for this country.

Lynch's medal likely was awarded based on what she endured in the Iraqi "hospital." I came across some interesting statements in another forum discussing this topic made by Greg Walker, author of "At the Hurricane's Eye - U.S. Special Operations Forces from Vietnam to Desert Storm" as well as "SEAL!" and "Teammates" and several other titles, and a former editor-in-chief for a past special operations journel entitled "Behind the Lines". I have read these three books and magazine articles by Greg Walker and he is a top shelf military historian and writer.

QUOTE
Army rangers from two of the three ranger battalions in the Regiment seized and held the more important inner perimeter around what was now called "Objective Scorpion" where Lynch was confirmed to be. Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 6 executed the actual assault which was picture perfect due to the precise "U.S. eyes-on" and video information provided by known and vetted intelligence sources, both military and civilian, involved in the operation's planning. Upon the SEALs entering the hospital grounds two bodies were discovered laying in the hospital's courtyard. Four to six bodies were discovered in the hospital's morgue. The "hospital" was in fact a carnage factory in which its medical staff did what it was they were told to do, when they were told to do it, and how they were told to do it. This is why an Iraqi lawyer - not an Iraqi physician - played the vital role he did in seeing our POWs recovered from this site.

Lynch's injuries and suspected wounds were predicted and planned for in terms of initial medical attention (triage) based upon the earlier discovery of two of the missing US female soldiers' uniform items (Lynch's being some of these). These items were discovered by U.S. Marines during their operations in the city and were found in a second floor bathroom of a building the Marines had searched/cleared. The items, marked by their owners for personal identification purposes using heavy duty "100 mile and hour" tape, included Lynch's perforated and bloody body armor and the womens' damaged / cut away chemical protectives suits that they'd been wearing at the time of their capture. The primary physican for Task Force 20 personally cared for Lynch when she was brought aboard the specially designed and equipped medical evacuation helicopter belonging to Task Force 20.

The SEAL assault team was flown into the objective by Army Blackhawk helicopters owned and flown by the Night Stalkers of SOAR 160. This is the same unit and fliers who did such a magnificent job in Somalia ("Blackhawk Down"). The Marine air element described provided heavy transport for the ranger assault teams. The medical evac helo used to care for Lynch was likewise SOAR 160 owned and operated.

Specific Rules of Engagement were authorized at the National Command Authority for the operation and are so written, staffed, and approved for ALL U.S. POW recovery operations.

It was also Task Force 20 operators who were inbound and on the ground at Talil within hours the first sustainable information being recieved regarding our POWs. They formed the core of the planning process for the operation. This included an earlier investigated series of reports of American POWs possibly being held at a small girls' school on the outskirts of the city. Iraqi sources had reported the school being taken over by Iraqi irregular forces, and medical personnel from the nearby hospital being brought in to attend the injured Americans (Again, the Iraqi medical personnel did as they were told by Iraqi intelligence / security forces. Their efforts were self-serving to the nth degree leaving doing "the hard right" over the "easy wrong" to the average Iraqi citizen who provided information, and the specific Iraqi attorney who risked his life and the lives of his family to go far beyond his humanitarian duties on behalf of Lynch).

This was the first "hard" report and potential sighting of US POWs in the area and it became the lynch pin for the follow-on effort conducted by US forces to recover PVT Lynch and her fellow soldiers before they could be executed or moved further north into the Baghdad area.

These operations were buoyed by a days-earlier POW operation conducted by British forces in Basura to recover two captured UK soldiers. This operation was mounted within 48 hours of the soldiers' capture, with information leading the UK force to a disguised Iraqi command and control center (using a civilian structure to protect its true military purpose). One UK POW had already been mistreated and executed by his captors by the time Brit forces stormed the compound. The second UK POW was successfully rescued. Over 100 Iraqi opposition forces were killed in the raid. This operation occurred several days prior to the rescue of Lynch and provided an insight into how the Iraqi irregular and intelligence forces were going to deal with Coalition POWs unless they could be located and freed as soon as possible.

Upon her being successfully extracted from "Scorpion" Lynch was first taken to Talil Air Field then to an air base in Kuwait. She was flown by SOAR 160 pilots and crews, and guarded by Army/Navy SOF operators from Task Force 20. She was transported to a secure medical facility by Task Force 20 personnel waiting on the ground for her arrival in Kuwait.

The bodies of her fellow soldiers, mistreated and then executed by Iraqi irregular forces at the hospital, were dug up by hand by the operators of SEAL Team 6 from their shallow graves. They were then transported out of Objective Scorpion along with the raiders and inner security ranger teams left to protect SIX's operators as they searched for remaining living POWs, Iraqi high value targets (i.e. "Chemical Ali"), and any additional evidence of possible weapons of mass destruction (documents, ordinance) that may have been held in what was actually an Iraqi senior level command and control installation, to include torture chamber.

You're most welcome. I experienced something similar to what I imagine you might experience when you read Ghost Soldiers when I read a book about Iwo Jima called Flags of Our Fathers.

I read the book as a Memorial Day weekend project a few years after my father died, and it blew me away. My dad had been a talker - he wasn't really one of those guys who couldn't tell you what Iwo was like, and I knew it was bad - I just didn't know how bad, and the author (whose father was the lone Navy corpsman in the famous Rosenthal flag-raising photograph) described it in vivid detail. I spent the entire weekend crying and needing to put the book down, but not being able to leave it there.

I had always admired my father, but my respect for him and my awe of his personal courage was changed forever when I read that book.

I only wish I could have read it when he was alive.

Please share your impression of Ghost Soldiers with us after you've read it. A lot of Freepers have it, and if you feel like you can talk about it, I know people here would be interested in what you thought of it.

Very nice "meeting" you, by the way. Best of luck.

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