A story by the British Broadcasting Corp. on May 15 dissectedthe rescue of American soldier Jessica Lynch and concluded that”her story is one of the most stunning pieces of newsmanagement ever conceived.”
Lynch’s rescue from an Iraqi hospital was called a”daring commando raid,” and America immediately fell inlove with the young female soldier. It was such a good story NBC isplanning to turn it into a made-for-TV movie.
But the fantastic story reported in the U.S. is in stark contrastto the BBC report. U.S. media repeatedly reported that the soldierswho rescued her did so in the face of heavy enemy gunfire, butaccording to the BBC, Iraqi forces had already retreated when ourmilitary knowingly stormed the hospital, guns a-blazing.
According to Iraqi doctors in the BBC report, U.S. soldiers stormedthe hospital shooting blanks, shouting, “Go, go, go,”as if it was a Hollywood movie. This was captured on thesoldiers’ night vision cameras and then edited by themilitary to make it look like a battle had occurred.
The mainstream U.S. media willingly broadcast this, eager toentertain their audience with one of the best fairy tales ever tocome out of a war. But the truth is that the rescue wasunnecessarily violent, terrorizing a hospital full of sick peopleand the doctors trying to help them.
According to the BBC, doctors in the hospital said they had madearrangements to deliver Lynch two days earlier but as they drove toa U.S. military checkpoint in an ambulance, they were shot at byU.S. soldiers and had to turn around.
An April 20 CNN report said that doctors took risks to care forLynch, providing her with food, clothes, medical supplies, and newsabout advancing U.S. forces in defiance of orders from Iraqimilitary and government leaders.
Like her rescuers, Jessica Lynch was portrayed a hero, fightingagainst all odds. On April 3, the Washington Post ran a story onher capture headlined “She Was Fighting to theDeath.”
Using unnamed military sources, the Washington Post stated thatLynch “continued firing at the Iraqis even after shesustained multiple gunshot wounds” and was then stabbed whenthe Iraqi forces closed in.
According to the BBC, she had no bullet or stab wounds, onlyinjuries from her vehicle turning over. These injuries wereconfirmed by U.S. doctors and her own father.
Mohammed Odeh al Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer who reportedly saw Lynchbeing slapped and interrogated, was given political asylum in theU.S., received a $500,000 book deal with the Rupert Murdoch-ownedHarper Collins publisher, and was offered a cushy job at a lobbyingfirm for U.S. military contractors. He has since refused to talk tothe press.
Lynch has forgotten everything that happened in those ten days,including her rescue. Doctors say she will never remember.
At a recent press conference in the family’s Virginia home,her father, in response to questions about the BBC report said,”Right now we are really not supposed to talk about thatsubject, you know. It is still an ongoing investigation, and wecan’t talk about nothing like that.”
Another young, American, blonde-haired girl named Rachel Corriealso fighting in the Middle East made the news — seven days beforeLynch was taken into Iraqi custody.
But she was not a U.S. soldier; she was part of the InternationalSolidarity Movement acting as a “human shield” toprotect Palestinians from Israeli attacks. She was brutallymurdered by an Israeli bulldozer driver who didn’t stop whenhe saw Corrie in her bright orange jacket.
She won’t be getting a made-for-TV special.
