Free Republic

Perhaps you've heard of them. Rescued in dramatic fashion within three weeks of each other, teenagers Jessica Lynch and Elizabeth Smart were separately entrenched in the public consciousness before network television brought them together for a showy November "sweeps" ratings battle. Only in America could it come to this: NBC's "Saving Jessica Lynch," saga of the Iraqi war's designated heroine, vs. CBS' "The Elizabeth Smart Story," saga of the kidnap victim who astonishingly made it back home. The two TV movies, both tied to books about their subjects, go head-to-head tonight, with the smart money favoring CBS. Its story of...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Army private Jessica Lynch, the badly injured U.S. prisoner of war who was rescued from a hospital during the Iraq war, said in her first interview that she is not the Rambo-style hero she has been portrayed as by American media and the military. Lynch, 20, told ABC network reporter Diane Sawyer in an interview to be aired on "Primetime" next Tuesday, the same day as her authorized biography is published, that she never fired a shot when ambushed. "My weapon did jam and I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I don't look at...