1115.org

The pride of West Virginia

I’ll start this off by immunizing myself against the charges I am dissing
Jessica Lynch. I’m not. She chose to join the Army, she survived a
horrible ordeal, and conducted herself with honor.

The story behind the story has been explored by several (mostly non-U.S.)
media outlets, and the main conclusion has been that this was an elaborate hoax
designed to create a hero, some positive press, and some feel-good fodder for
a country in the middle of a questionable war.

After the initial “Shock and Awe” nonsense, U.S. forces became bogged down for several days in a sandstorm. The media was busy blowing it out of proportion, the administration was trying to hold it together, and in the Iraqi desert, a convoy of support personnel ran into some poor visibility and had a wreck. A firefight may or may not have ensued, but what is clear is that Jessica Lynch was captured and taken to a hospital. Days later, an Iraqi doctor offered to bring her in to a nearby U.S. headquarters. Nothing happened for 2 days.

That the story doesn’t end here is my main point of contention. Short of getting some semi-real life training for a special forces rescue unit, the only value to letting Lynch sit in a hospital for 2 extra days was propaganda. When the special forces stormed the hospital, they did so with a professional-quality video camera and some pretty bright lights. Not standard gear for a rescue from what I know. Somehow this footage made it in edited form to media outlets the very next day. I mention that it was edited for 2 reasons. First, why was it so important to edit that footage so quickly (or at all), and second, why has the Pentagon steadfastly refused to release the unedited footage.

Further, if all of this was on film, how did the reports of Lynch having gun shot and stab wounds come into play. And why does Faux News.com still have this story Lynch Was Shot, Stabbed in Fierce Struggle With Iraqi Captors online?

The administration got a lot of mileage out of this for quite some time, with only the Washington Post running any critical stories (and then only because it was the Post that had been so badly burned on the original story.)

Now that the Lynch book is due out, and the NBC movie-of-the-week airs next week, I hope that some more questions start to get asked. Like who was behind all of this? Isn’t it interesting that Lynch is from West Virginia, a perpetual battleground state that went to Bush in 2000, but had been narrowly Democratic in recent history? A small state where a few thousand votes either way could mean a swing of 5 precious electoral votes. Say, the population of Lynch’s hometown of Palestine, WV…

In closing, again, I am not accusing Jessica Lynch of doing anything wrong. Under the Uniform Code of Military Conduct, she must follow orders that come from way over her head without question. She had no choice, and thus deserves no criticism for the book and TV deals. That is reserved for the people who perpetrated this fraud in the name of the military and this country.