About the blanks; I don't remember the video ever showing them firing off a single round. I'm sure they were locked and loaded and ready to rock, but it is possible they didn't meat any resistance since Iraqi soldiers were fleeing left and right. I too remember her family saying that she had not been shot or stabbed after they learned of her rescue, then not mentioning anything about it ever again. So, it is definately in the realm of possibility that the story is being exagerated. People are asking why they would do this, I ask why they wouldn't?
If this is really "staged" it is not just shameful. It is outright fraudulent and responsible people should be punished. I am more inclined to believe that this is a real rescue with misinformation and exaggeration by both the military and the press.
US rejects BBC Lynch report The Pentagon has hit back at allegations made in a BBC documentary that the US military stage-managed the rescue in Iraq of American PoW Jessica Lynch. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said any claims that the facts of Private Lynch's rescue were misrepresented by the US military were "void of all facts and absolutely ridiculous". An investigation by the BBC's Correspondent programme said the story of the rescue was "one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived". The 19-year-old army clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was captured when her company took a wrong turning just outside Nasiriya and was ambushed. Nine of her comrades were killed and Private Lynch was taken to the local hospital. Eight days later US special forces stormed the hospital, capturing the "dramatic" events on a night vision camera. The rescue was extensively reported around the world, with the pictures of the rescue turning Private Lynch into a cult hero in the United States. But Correspondent said the US military knew there were no Iraqi forces guarding the hospital, and quoted a local doctor saying that the troops used blank rounds to "make a show" of the operation. It also questioned reports that Private Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated. The programme said Iraqi doctors in Nasiriya claimed to have provided the best treatment they could for the soldier in the midst of war. But the Pentagon said no blanks were used, and that all the proceedures used were consistent with normal operations when there is a threat of encountering hostile forces. "We don't want to take unnecessary risk. We do make sure that when we exercise military force we use the right resources, sufficient to get the job done. It is a decision made by the commander on the ground," Mr Whitman told CNN. The Pentagon never released an account of what happened to Lynch because it didn't have an account He also said that the US military never claimed that the troops came under fire when they burst into the hospital, but that troops supporting the mission exchanged fire nearby. Speculative reports in the media were responsible for some of the misinformation, not Pentagon statements, he added. "The Pentagon never released an account of what happened to Lynch because it didn't have an account. She never told us," Mr Whitman added. Doctors now say Jessica Lynch has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3043115.stm
Is this true? Did the US Military ever publicly divulge exactly what happened, because I don't remember that. I just remember some reports from news correspondents. Like it's so hard to believe the press would run with an unsubstantiated rumor. Are some of you just assuming that the press was given this information by high-ranking military officials, or is there actual proof of this? And yes, the BBC is a relatively credible news source, but the main source of their article appears to be some random Iraqi doctors. How credible of a report is this? It's amazing how some people's skepticism just comes and goes.
Its really that simple. I have my reservations on this conflict but the way people are grasping at straws on this one is.. well interesting. I think Timing said it best. Comical.
They sound like real sweethearts to me...I wonder which ones held her down..while her interrogators beat the sh** out of her?
I have a side story you dont want to hear ..but here it is. In 1961 in Turkey I was assigned to retrieve a US citizen who tried to do a drug deal and was abducted. A Turkish detective was assigned with me to find the guy ..we were less than an hour behind the abducters. He interrogated about five innocent bystanders( who had seen the abduction) each one was asked a question, beaten and kicked, and not allowed to answer the question until they begged for mercy. If they didnt have the proper whine in their voices they were beaten again before they were allowed to answer the original question. Within an hour we had the bad guys in custody and the American was saved from certain harm. Thats the way it happens in that part of the world..they dont slap anyone about..they kick the sh** out of them..and everyone co- operates or they get the sh** kicked out of themselves.
Since the bystanders weren't allowed to answer before being kicked we don't know if the kicking had any effect or not. They may have given the same answers anyway.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...,1,4955682.story?coll=la-ap-topnews-headlines Some Say Force Not Needed in Lynch Rescue By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer NASIRIYAH, Iraq -- The U.S. commandos refused a key and instead broke down doors and went in with guns drawn. They carried away the prisoner in the dead of night with helicopter and armored vehicle backup -- even though there was no Iraqi military presence and the hospital staff didn't resist. In the tale of Pfc. Jessica Lynch's rescue, this is the Iraqi side. New attention has been drawn to the April 1 rescue since a BBC report earlier this month created controversy by charging the Pentagon exaggerated the danger of the raid. An Associated Press reporter spoke to more than 20 doctors, nurses and other workers at the hospital. In interview after interview, the assessment was the same: The dramatics that surrounded Lynch's rescue were unnecessary. Some also said the raid itself was unneeded because they were trying to turn Lynch over, although they conceded they made no attempt to notify U.S. troops of that effort. U.S. military officers answer that the rescuers didn't know Iraqi troops had left Nasiriyah General Hospital and that the Americans had to storm in ready to deal with any circumstance. They add that U.S. troops outside the hospital were fired on and that fighting was still going on elsewhere in the southern city, which saw some of the fiercest combat of the war. "If they had come to the door and asked for Jessica, we would have gladly handed her over to them. There was no need for all that drama," said Dr. Hazem Rikabi, an internist. "Why the show? They just wanted to prove they were heroes," he said. "There was no battle." American military doctrine calls for using overwhelming force in such situations. "We don't want it to be a fair fight," Marine Lt. Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told AP this week. "The fact that we didn't encounter heavy resistance in the hospital was a good thing." Pentagon officials bristle at any suggestion that Lynch's rescue was staged or that any details were exaggerated. They have never claimed there was fighting inside the hospital, but stress that Nasiriyah was not a peaceful place. "We didn't need to create any drama. It was there already," Lapan said. Nasiriyah was a combat zone and American troops were being attacked by Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes elsewhere in the area, he said. U.S. troops supporting the raid -- though not the rescue team itself -- were fired on from other parts of the hospital compound, Lapan said. "You don't have perfect knowledge when you go in of what resistance you will face, so you prepare for the worst," Lapan said. Spokesmen for the Navy SEAL, Army Ranger and Marine commando units involved in the rescue declined requests to allow participants to be interviewed. Lynch, an Army supply clerk, was captured March 23 after her convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah three days after the war began. Even among the quickly famous U.S. POWs, Lynch stood out -- West Virginia girl, not even 20, held up within days as an American ideal. Her fate, and her family's vigil back in Palestine, W.Va., became fodder for the front pages. In the hospital, staffers said, Lynch made friends from around the building with her kind ways and jokes, and employees went out of their way to keep her comfortable. For a week, Dr. Wajdi al-Jabbar said, he and an ambulance driver rode the perilous streets to get her fruit juice. Suad Husseiniya, a nurse, said she grew so attached to Lynch that she repeatedly rubbed talcum powder into the soldier's sore back. "She knew everyone by their first name," said the hospital's deputy director, Dr. Khodheir al-Hazbar. Al-Jabbar said the staff never spoke to Lynch about the war. "We didn't want her to lose our trust." U.S. officials have said Lynch, who is recovering in a Washington hospital, doesn't remember anything about her capture, and she has not yet commented publicly about her time in Iraq. Her family was traveling back to West Virginia on Wednesday for the first time since Lynch's rescue and planned to hold a news conference Thursday in Palestine to discuss her recovery from her injuries. Randy Coleman, a family spokesman, said last week that the Lynches were unconcerned about claims the rescue may not have occurred as previously reported because "Jessi never asked to be made a hero." U.S. officers have said Lynch's rescue was launched after an Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, mapped out her location for U.S. Marines over several days. Al-Rehaief and his family were moved to the United States for safety, and he has accepted a job with the Livingston Group, a lobbying firm in Washington. Jim Pruitt, an associate of the firm, said Wednesday that al-Rehaief had no comment about the rescue. "When the time comes, Mohammed will tell his story in great detail," Pruitt said. The hospital's staff contends the Americans could have retrieved Lynch without the show of force. A day before Iraqi troops left the hospital, doctors said, the staff received instructions from Nasiriyah's governor, Younis Ahmed al-Thareb, to transfer Lynch to the Maternity and Children's Hospital on the other side of the Euphrates River, where American forces were in control. The governor told them it was for her own safety because he feared the Americans might attack the hospital because Iraqi soldiers were there, al-Jabbar and others said. But they also said they didn't try to notify U.S. troops of their intention. They said an ambulance carrying Lynch set out at 11:45 p.m., but as it approached the al-Zaytoun Bridge in the darkness it was fired on by American troops and the driver sped back to the hospital. "The next day, we decided to put her on a donkey cart so she would be in open view of the U.S. soldiers," said Dr. Miqdad al-Khazaei. But before they could do that, Iraqi forces -- including the regional commander of the Baath Party, Adel Abdallah al-Doori, and the governor -- began pulling out of the hospital and the city, al-Khazaei said. "By noon, they were all gone," he said. Hours later, the Americans arrived. Al-Hazbar, the deputy director, had moved his wife and their two sons into the hospital to ride out the battle for Nasiriyah. He had just put his sons to bed when heavy explosions sounded at 11:45 p.m. Less than 30 minutes later, he heard helicopters flying over the hospital. Tanks and armored personnel carriers parked outside. Then he heard loud voices: "Go! Go! Go!" The commandos burst in. Al-Jabbar said the soldiers declined an offer of the hospital's master key so they wouldn't have to break down the doors. "They pointed the gun at us for two hours," he said. "Their manner was very rude. They even handcuffed the director of the hospital. ... Not a single shot was fired at them. They shot at doors -- all doors. They broke them, kicked them open." Al-Hazbar said he had expected a raid but was surprised by its intensity. Now that there was no Iraqi military around, why so much force? He said he and his family found themselves surrounded by about 20 American soldiers firing their guns. "They were shooting indiscriminately, everywhere, at windows, between our legs, on the floor. We were terrified," al-Hazbar said. He said it then occurred to him that no one was being hit by bullets. "They were shooting at me, but nothing happened to me," he said. Al-Hazbar said he concluded the Americans were firing blanks. "They didn't shoot real bullets because they knew there was no military force in the hospital," he said. Lapan said the idea that the rescue team would be carrying blanks in a combat zone was absurd. "To ever send a force into a combat situation with blanks is just ludicrous," he said. "You don't use blanks in a war. You use blanks for training." Weapons experts also have scoffed at the claim the rescuers fired blanks. They say the use of blanks in M-16 assault rifles and M-4 carbines requires a special attachment at the end of the barrels and no sign of those were seen in the video of the raid released by the Pentagon. In addition, they say, it takes time to remove the attachment and change ammunition, which would leave a soldier dangerously exposed if fighting broke out. For the hospital staff, Lynch is now a memory, there for a while, suddenly gone, a strange story in the midst of a strange war. Despite the way she was taken, she is remembered fondly. "She always smiled when she saw me," said Zanouba Abdel-Zahra, a cleaner at the hospital. * __ Associated Press Writer Matt Kelley in Washington contributed to this report.
I think this story bothers me only for two reasons. 1 - The military wanted to make sure they were capable of getting her and themselves out alive. It appears precautions were taken to the fullest and our guys shouldn't be lambasted by the rush they surely experienced while attempting the rescue. To be frank many guys didn't return from this war. To exepct anything other than the unexpected could cost you your life. Many MIA's didn't make it home alive. Many of their bodies were broadcast on television and that I'm sure hit many of these guys hard. 2 - This story targets our everyday servicemen. Many of whom I'm sure didn't want to be in Iraq. To make them out as a platoon of attention seeking fools. As if they are unworthy of the rare accomplishment of bringing home someone who is MIA.
I didn't get that out of the story. I just got there are two sides, with some discrepancies, some parts of the story that ring less true than others. The reporter is clear to make point #1 from the US side. I didn't get point #2 at all.
As it turns out the ambulance was never fired upon. Just some Iraquis trying to extort a 10,000 dollar ransom in exchange for info on Lynch and her location. The story..total BS, based on a phone call from someone claiming to be an Iraqi doctor. No one involved with the mission, soldier or media was contacted by the BBC or their so called reporter. The story has been refuted in whole by all who were there. If this story had originated in the US, the reporter would has been fired for fabricating the news. The LA times is under fire for picking up crap like this..while respectable media wouldnt touch it. The BBC reporter was never on the scene and fabricated the whole story from one unconfirmed phone call. The LA Times follow up story says the US military would not give them a statement..They must not of wanted a statement from the American media that witnessed this event.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...,1060115.column?coll=la-headlines-oped-manual Robert Scheer: Pentagon Aims Guns at Lynch Reports It is one thing when the talk-show bullies who shamelessly smeared the last president, even as he attacked the training camps of Al Qaeda, now term it anti-American or even treasonous to dare criticize the Bush administration. When our Pentagon, however — a $400-billion- a-year juggernaut — savages individual journalists for questioning its version of events, it is worth noting. Especially if you're that journalist. Last week, this column reported the findings of a British Broadcasting Corp. special report that accused the U.S. military and media of inaccurately and manipulatively hyping the story of U.S. Pvt. Jessica Lynch and her rescue from an Iraq hospital. The column was also informed by similar and independently reported articles and statements in the Toronto Star, the Washington Post and other reputable publications. Expected — and received — was a hysterical belch of outrage from the right-wing media, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire, which has already committed a huge book advance to the telling of this mythic tale. A fiery and disingenuous response from the Pentagon, however, was quite a bit more sobering. Calling the column a "tirade," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke wrote in a letter to The Times that "Scheer's claims are outrageous, patently false and unsupported by the facts." "Official spokespeople in Qatar and in Washington, as well as the footage released, reflected the events accurately," the Pentagon letter continued. "To suggest otherwise is an insult and does a grave disservice to the brave men and women involved." Actually, what is a grave disservice is manipulating a gullible media with leaked distortions from unnamed official sources about Lynch's heroics in battle. That aside, it would have been easier to rebut the Pentagon if its spokeswoman had actually questioned any of the facts the BBC or this column reported. In particular, the Pentagon turned down the request by the BBC and other media to view the full, unedited footage of the rescue. Perhaps Clarke is frustrated that in the days since the BBC report, several major publications such as the Chicago Tribune and the London Daily Mail have independently verified much of the BBC's disturbing account of what the broadcasting corporation called "one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived." The distortions concerning Lynch began two days after the rescue with a front-page Washington Post story by veteran reporters Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb. They cited U.S. officials as the source of their information that Lynch "fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition" and that she "continued firing after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds." The Post quoted one of the unnamed U.S. officials as saying "she was fighting to the death. She did not want to be taken alive." Despite their current defensiveness, Clarke and other Pentagon honchos had to know that the story attributed to U.S. officials was false because Lynch had at that point already been rescued and examined by U.S. military doctors, who found no evidence of a single gunshot wound, let alone multiple gunshot wounds. Yet they did nothing to challenge the Post story, which was carried worldwide and quickly became the main heroic propaganda myth of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was only last week, after the BBC-initiated brouhaha, that the Pentagon finally launched its own investigation of what actually occurred when Lynch was taken prisoner. According to the Washington Times, the investigation came about after top Pentagon officials cast doubt on the Lynch battle-scene account, of which she has no memory. However, the Pentagon investigators were not asked to look into the circumstances surrounding Lynch's subsequent rescue. Much of the BBC's account has now been supported by other media investigations, which confirm that a U.S. attack on an unguarded hospital was spun into the stuff of Hollywood heroics. The Tribune's Monday story, for example, provided new details of how slickly a tale of derring-do was created, enhanced for television by that five-minute Pentagon-supplied night-vision video. The Tribune also added details supporting the BBC account that hospital staff members had placed Lynch in an ambulance and tried to deliver her to a U.S. checkpoint before being turned back by random American fire. What is particularly sad in all of this is that a wonderfully hopeful story was available to the Pentagon to sell to the eager media: one in which besieged Iraqi doctors and nurses bravely cared for — and supplied their own blood to — a similarly brave young American woman in a time of madness and violence. Instead, eager to turn the war into a morality play between good and evil, the military used — if not abused — Lynch to put a heroic spin on an otherwise sorry tale of unjustified invasion. The truth hurts, but that's no excuse for trying to shoot the messenger.
This is an amplification of the same BS story given by Iraqis..No news here. They still havent even talked to anyone who was there except the Iraqis whose story has been 100% refuted by eyewitness reports.
