Jessica Lynch was among the group of rear support personnel who were
captured by the Iraqis. After her rescue by special forces we were
told she didn't remember the event and probably would not ever
remember it. Yet stories came out of seemlying nowhere about how she
heroically fought until she had no ammunition left. The POW's were
still in Iraqi hands and the other members of her group were dead. So
if there were no witnesses and she didn't remember the event.....HOW
DID THE ENTIRE WESTERN PRESS GET THIS NOTION OF HER HERIOCALLY
FIGHTING? The last I heard of this subject was that she was run over
by a vehicle and left unconscious and did no fighting on that day.

Did I miss something or did the Bush adminstration decide they needed
a hero and then simply made one up. And what happened to the press
verifying stories?

Every breath Clinton took seemed to be criticized by the press while
Bush has enjoyed so many get out of jail free cards it makes me sick.

It could be I just missed a news cycle where all of this was explained
in some innocent way. But the thing stinks of lies and coverups.

Hope you enjoy researching it as much as I will enjoy an answer :)

Thanks,
Catscan

---

Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 15 Jun 2003 20:05 PDT

Unless "I" missed something, you are willing to accept speculation and
conjecture as an answer, yes?

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

Hello Catscan.

There is certainly a lot of controversy surrounding this story that is
now beginning to come out. The media got the original story(s) from
government sources which they routinely quote as gospel truth. And I
agree with you totally  about the press giving Bush a free ride. He
and Cheney probably would've been driven out of the whitehouse one a
rail by the whole Enron scandal if they had not 'changed the
conversation' with the Iraq war as Representative Dennis Kucinich puts
it.

I've gathered together a number of news articles that will hopefully
help to shed some light on this growing scandal. First, let's take a
(brief) foray into conservative media. Occasionally I take a look at
Fox News just because it's good for me to get different points of view
(generally I read independent media (http://www.alternet.org - that
kind of thing) But it's interesting comparing the different kinds of
media coverage on a story like this:
Here's Bill O'Reilley from Fox News's take:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88186,00.html
"But on April 4, a U.S. military doctor said it didn't happen.  So any
cover-up accusation is pure garbage"

This is terrible reasoning (but I guess you can kind of expect that
from him). It may be true that a military doctor might have said this
somewhere to somone, but he certainly did not get the publicity that
the original story got which is the main problem. The main problem
isn't even that the government lied but that they made such a huge
deal out of this. Otherwise it would've just blended in with all of
the other wartime lies that were being told.

Now the truth is starting to leak out of the sides of the media.
Because of the nature of mainstream media and it's willingness to be
spoon fed by the White House, most of the articles demanding that the
truth come out or found in smaller, independent media. O'Reilly was
particulary incensed at these two articles by Robert Scheer from the
Nation which helped to get this whole controversy going:

Saving Private Lynch Take 2
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030602&s=scheer20030520

Pentagon Aims Guns at Lynch Reports
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030616&s=scheer20030529

----
Here are some other recent articles that question what is going on:


Release 'Jessica Lynch' outtakes
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/tuesday/opinion_e35e855746b290e000f3.html
Funny article about how the government should release the outtakes of
the video too.

Representative Dennis Kucinich, who in my opinion is easily the most
fearless and honest of all of the Democratic presidential candidates
is legally seeking the release of the videotapes:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16055
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-cong/2003/jun/03/060302472.html
Dennis has been a real thorn in the government Hawks' side since the
war began.

Giving good war 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/15/IN254697.DTL
Interesting article about the loss of U.S. John Wayne/American War
Hero mythology and the misplaced attempt of the government to add to
this mythos.

An Unlikely Hero? 
Think Again: The Pentagon and Press Need Jessica Lynch
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7569
A good dissection of the Jessica Lynch story as propaganda.


Saving Private Lynch: The Made for TV Movie:
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2003/05/16/pvt_lynch/index_np.html
A funny satirical letter between hollywood executives

----
As expected, International press has not been so kind.
From the Middle East Paper Al Bawaba:
Jessica Lynch “rescue”: Hollywood-style propaganda in Iraq?
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=250278&lang=e&dir=news

From the BBC:
Saving Private Lynch Story 'Flawed'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm


So will this story every come out and bring down the Bush
administration...in my estimation not likely! What happened to the
(mainstream) press anyway? They are just completely wimpy on calling
the government on *anything*. I think one of the main problems with
the press is that they tend to take the easy road repeating as fact
anything that they are fed by the government. When they get caught
like in this case they may sputter around a bit and correct the story
somewhat on the 3 article on page 43, but are not about to do a front
page expose. For example, here is an article from the Washington Post
by one of their reporters mildly taking to task his own paper for
incorrectly reporting this story (note that this article was on page
25 of the paper):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28908-2003May22&notFound=true


Since most people get their news from these mainstream news sources,
most of them are oblivious and will remain so. They might have an idea
that *something* happened that wasn't quite right by watching a one
minute blurb on abc news, but it seems to be pretty commonly accepted
(sadly enough) that the government lies when it suits them. It used to
be considered very unpatriotic to think that anyone in the government
would lie, but now for most people consider it normal. That's why I
don't think you'll see too much outrage over this. People will just
vaguely register the story on page 25 and skip over to Dear Abby (or
the comics or sports page if they are so inclined).

So to sum it uo, the governement is probably very much guilty and will
probably get away with it as usual. I hope you enjoy this little
survey as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Thanks,
-shiva777

Thank you very much!! I haven't read the links you posted yet but I
very much enjoyed your point of view and speculation on the issue.
Probably, because it matches my own political leanings and concern
about apathy and lack of attention span of the country. I think I
should start using a site like alternet.org for my info as I'm
disillusioned with the bought out comglomerate media sources that
dominate the mainstream. Even my beloved "Time" magazine is now sucked
in under Time Warner AOL and it shows now :(

This is the first time I've used this resource and I'm very impressed.

Regarding: "Bush has enjoyed so many get out of jail free cards it
makes me sick."

While I am not a fan of George W. Bush myself, I cannot see how you
can blame him for misrepresenting the Jessica Lynch fiasco. Even if he
did talk about this, his info comes from the department of defense. If
there was anyone that made up anything about Jessica Lynch, it almost
certainly was not George Bush himself.

tisme-ga

PS: I thought shiva777's answer was great, and I agree that Bush gets
away with way too much (as do most politicians)... but the comment I
made was meant to refer to the original question. I just don't think
there was a need for Bush to make up anything regarding Jessica Lynch,
and wanted to point out that the people who did the press releases
etc. were not from the white house.

tisme-ga

The response of tisme-ga simply reminds me how naive Americans are
about their government.  Let me assure tisme-ga that any press release
about this war that was initiated by the government had to pass muster
with rumsfeld who had a direct line to the President or his right hand
man. The politics of politics as well as the politics of war directly
impact the incumbent President and if you think some lowly press
person in the army or marines made up this story on his own without it
being okayed by rumsfeld's people and thus the president, I have
another island the size of manhatten to sell you cheat!

All presidents are meglomanics no matter the political party-the name
of the game is to sell every action as a brilliant choice by the
president and his people. And, nobody is more adept at following
orders than the military.  They are also least likely to make the
mistake of disobeying an order. The military press did not make a
mistake.

I heard that the doctors at that hospital had been trying to get the
military to come pick up Lynch for several days before they finally
showed up. That her whereabouts had been known before the other Iraqi
fellow showed up and the tale about seeing Lynch slapped was a lie.
the whole swat team swarming down on her and rescuing her was a set up
because there were none of Saddam's people in the area and everyone
knew it.

I don't know which version is true because I was not there. I guess
I'm always surprised that people think somehow the President won't lie
because he's the president. Or, that in these kinds of critical
situations, the President or rumsfeld would be willing to leave these
types of decisions to others. Not going to happen!

saabster,

I am not an American. :P

tisme-ga

I agree that this great answer.  Personally, I not only support the
need for independent media, as a founding volunteer with dc indymedia
(dc.indymedia.org) I try and help produce it :-)

While it should be conventional wisdom that mainstream american
corporate media panders to government officals, I imagine some
questioners might want some substantive information to back the
accusation.  Toward that, you might want to direct folks to a new
study by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting): "Amplifying
Officials, Squelching Dissent: FAIR study finds democracy poorly
served by war coverage", located at
http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/warstudy.html.

:-)