Jessica Lynch snubs Iraqi who helped to free her

That's a shame. What could be more important than meeting the man who saved your life?


Mr al-Rehaief was given a hero's welcome during his trip to Palestine and named an honorary West Virginian.


Hilarious, kind of like being named an honorary trucker or something.

 

That is unbelievable. I would postpone my wedding to meet the person who facilitated my rescue.

 

This reads like an article from The Onion. Props to the al-Rehaiefs, and thumbs down to another media-attention-obsessed dimwit. Who cares about Lynch? What did she really do, other than sit wounded somewhere and then cash in? Blech.

 

Yeah, but it's hardly an isolated misconception...The whole idea of heroism has been altered to actually mean survivor these days; anyone who lived through something tough is now called a hero...The pilots of that spy plane that crashed in China, prison camp survivors, etc...all called heroes nowadays. To me a hero is someone who risked his or her life for the sake of others, not preserves his or her life under difficult circumstances. Tough, hardy, resilient, etc...there are compliments possbily due to people who do that kind of thing, but where heroism enters into it, I just don't know.


So we falsely make a hero out of Lynch, at lest in part for the sake of pro-war PR, and when she turns out to be a self-absorbed, unappreciative twit, in this case, we feel cheated. Why? Even heroes turn out to be twits, why wouldn't survivors?

 

or you could just invite that person to your wedding

 

Or you could marry them.

 

thats just sad...
her savior was being real modest eventhough she snubbed him. that shows wat a great man he is

 

Typical b****. She probably went into the military to meet guys....or get an education..........or get paid.......I doubt she had our country's interests as her focus from the beginning.

 

Huh?

 

What kind of crap statement is that??
I find it hard to believe that she didn't meet him, but where in the hell did that come from? And no, I don't think she deserved all the media attention. I think she was used by the Pentagon for PR purposes and I lean towards where MacBeth's coming from regarding heroes. But I don't think she warrants comments like that.

(it's probably a blind spot I have for soldiers wounded in action)

 

I agree that the whole Lynch thing including her apparent bogus rescue is waaay overblown but really every serviceman in Iraq is risking his life for the sake of others. Also, prison camps aren't hotels, soldiers are beaten and tortured for information which could endanger the lives of others. John McCain is sure as hell a damn hero to me for what he endured so let's not go overboard.

Ya know what's a real damn shame is that the man's name whose story was initially and mistakenly attributed to Lynch, being stabbed and fighting bravely to his death, is barely known and this girl is held up as a hero. That really turns my stomach.


Mom says soldier son was real hero of ambush in Iraq
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20030728-122338-5552r.htm
By Julian Coman
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

As she watched Pfc. Jessica Lynch's emotional homecoming on television last week, Arlene Walters struggled to suppress her growing anger.
For millions of Americans, Pfc. Lynch's first faltering steps in her hometown of Palestine, W.Va., were a moment of high emotion, a happy ending to one of the darkest incidents of the Iraq war.
For Mrs. Walters, however, the standing ovation and praise lavished on the young woman soldier, who was captured by Iraqi forces and later freed in a dramatic American raid, served only to highlight the contrasting treatment of her dead son, who fought in the same unit.
It was, fellow soldiers have told her, Sgt. Donald Walters who performed many of the heroics attributed to Pfc. Lynch by early news reports, and Sgt. Walters who was killed after mounting a lone stand against the Iraqis who ambushed their convoy of maintenance vehicles near Nasiriyah.
Yet few, if any, of the Americans watching Pfc. Lynch's homecoming last week have even heard her son's name.
"The military tell us that everyone who was in her unit was a hero," Mrs. Walters told the Sunday Telegraph. "In fact they have singled out Jessica Lynch as the hero, and they are not giving the recognition to my son that he deserves.
"The fighter that they thought was Jessica Lynch was Donald. When he was found he had two stab wounds in the abdomen, and he'd been shot once in the right leg and twice in the back. And he'd emptied his rounds of ammunition. Just like they said Jessica had done at first."
Sgt. Walters, a 33-year-old military cook from Oregon, had been serving with the ill-fated 507th Maintenance Unit, in which Pfc. Lynch was a supply clerk.
Two days after U.S. special operations forces rescued Pfc. Lynch from her hospital ward on April 1, an article in The Washington Post told how the female soldier had exhausted all her ammunition before capture, in an isolated and brave "fight to the death."
The article suggested that it was only after a prolonged battle, in which she was shot and stabbed, that Pfc. Lynch was taken prisoner. In all, 11 soldiers were killed and six captured. It subsequently emerged, however, that Pfc. Lynch's injuries were caused by her truck colliding with another vehicle as the convoy came under attack.
Last week, with no fanfare, the Army released a detailed report of the incident, which made it clear that a lone American fighter did, indeed, hold out against the Iraqis — but that the soldier was not Pfc. Lynch. It said that following the ambush, Sgt. Walters might have been left behind, hiding beside a disabled tractor-trailer, as Iraqi troops closed in. The report confirmed that he died of wounds identical to those first attributed to Pfc. Lynch.
"There is some information to suggest that a U.S. soldier, that could have been Walters, fought his way south of Highway 16 towards a canal and was killed in action. Sgt. Walters was in fact killed at some point during this portion of the attack. The circumstances of his death cannot be conclusively determined," the report says.
Fellow soldiers who witnessed the ambush have been less guarded. "One told me that if I read reports about a brave female soldier fighting, those reports were actually about Don," said Mrs. Walters.
"The information about what had happened had been taken by the military from intercepted Iraqi signals, and the gender had gotten mixed up. He was certain that the early reports had mixed up Jessica and Don."
Mrs. Walters and her husband now are struggling to persuade the U.S. military to acknowledge fully their son's bravery. Sgt Walters has been posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal, but his relatives argue that higher honors are deserved. The Army says the investigation into the incident is now closed.
"I just can't imagine him being left out there in the desert alone," said Mrs. Walters, who is still haunted by images of her son's lone stand.
"I'm not trying to take anything away from Jessica. We just want Don to get the credit he is entitled to for his bravery."
She has her own theories about the Army's reluctance to give him due credit.
"Perhaps the Army don't want to admit to the fact that he was left behind in the desert to fight alone," she said. "It isn't a good news story."

 

Uh oh, she said the word "entitled."



This is sad that more isn't benig done to aknowledge Donald's heroics.

 

Donald is a real hero. Lynch is... unappreciative to say the least. The Doctor who tried to visit here is way more of a hero than Lynch ever will be.

 

Real thoughtful analysis, TECH.

This is one of those situations where it seems so easy to rush to judgement -- but I'm guessing there's much more to this situation than meets the eye.

I'm just not ready to sit in judgement of someone who went through an ordeal that, God willing, most of us will never come close to experiencing. Although he is the man that saved her, he is also a visceral reminder of the trauma she recently endured -- who's to say what her mental state is and if she's ready to face that yet.

 

If Bush didn't start this war with Iraq this never would've happened. Worst president ever.

 

Her publisher... her agent... her first TV interviewer...

 

Thank you. I'm glad someone had the guts to say it.

 

i second the motion