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Phantom Blooper
08-27-03, 08:46 PM
Aug 27, 2003 <br />
<br />
Former POW Jessica Lynch Honorably Discharged From Army By Allison Barker Associated Press Writer <br />
<br />
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Former POW Jessica Lynch, the petite blonde who became...

firstsgtmike
08-28-03, 12:59 AM
Jessica Lynch Receives Honorable Discharge <br />
<br />
From Staff and Wire Reports <br />
Thursday, August 28, 2003; Page A16 <br />
<br />
<br />
Jessica Lynch, the former prisoner of war who became a national hero when Special...

marine5
09-23-03, 04:09 PM
"THANK GOD" she made it out of the Army..."ALIVE"...
Now her real battle begins...

montana
09-23-03, 10:32 PM
any dummy can get lost and captured...hero ???
im thinkin the fellas that did the rescue be the hero

Sgt Sostand
09-24-03, 07:26 AM
I dont think she did anything special what about those guys that where kill over their they are special in my book

(quote) Montana
any dummy can get lost and captured...hero ???
im thinkin the fellas that did the rescue be the hero

SemperFiGirl79
09-24-03, 08:05 AM
:qmark:
Has she even thanked the people who rescued her?
:confused:

SemperFiGirl79

USMC-FO
09-24-03, 08:59 AM
I would hope that most of us understand that Jessica Lynch is no "hero" and more a pawn caught up in a giant media circus that feeds on itself.

She was a Army REMF who was poorly led and had the misfortune to have been in a bad traffic accident in a tough neighborhood. The Army--and this is hardly a surprise--decided to juice up her situation. The media then decided to pay her big time. I don't begruge her the accolades--$$-- that are now on her doorstep. She never asked for any of this I suspect and I would also bet she would just as soon none of it ever happened.

We all know who the real hero's are, and that is important, becasuse all this hoopla will be old news in a year. Her book long since forgotten.

My 2 cents !

JChristin
09-24-03, 12:02 PM
USMC-FO

You are exactly right. Those who won't forget are the old and feeble sitting on the porch of at the "home." She will make good talk for those who never accomplished anything outside the military.

semper fi,
jchristin

Sparrowhawk
09-24-03, 12:18 PM
who did they find to replace her?

After all it is an Army of one..LOL



http://www.goarmy.com/img/hmtog02.gif



http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=1747

Dvan
09-24-03, 02:12 PM
I'm new here. Sparrowhawk, I laugh at that last post !! I've got a 'old army buddy' who leaves army propaganda on my office door. Bumper stickers that read 'go army'. (now THATS original and as compelling a piece of marketing as I've ever seen. Maybe an army of one stands for the syllables their recruits can handle...y'think?) Anyway, I inserted the word 'AWAY' into that bumper sticker and shoved it, in his MAILBOX...OK?

Admin and Unashamed!

Phantom Blooper
11-06-03, 02:35 PM
Family Says Lynch Memoir Reveals Rape

By ALLISON BARKER
Associated Press Writer





PALESTINE, W.Va. (AP) -- The authorized biography of former prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch says she was raped by her Iraqi captors, a family spokesman said Thursday.

"The book does cover the subject," spokesman Stephen Goodwin told The Associated Press. "It's a very difficult subject."

The book - "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" - is being released by Knopf publishing on Tuesday, Veterans Day. Reporter Rick Bragg, who wrote the book, tells Lynch's story.

Medical records cited in the book indicate that she was raped, the Daily News of New York reported in its Thursday editions. Officials have said Lynch has no memory of her ordeal.

"Jessi lost three hours. She lost them in the snapping bones, in the crash of the Humvee, in the torment her enemies inflicted on her after she was pulled from it," writes Bragg, according to the Daily News, which obtained a copy of the book.



"The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead," Bragg continues.

On ABC's "Good Morning America" host Diane Sawyer also gave details of the contents.

"The book does indeed cite some intelligence reports that she was treated brutally and a medical record which says, in the book, that she was a victim of a sodomizing rape," Sawyer said.

In confirming the reports, family spokesman Goodwin told the AP: "It's important to tell the story and let it be known, but she's not going to talk about it any more."

Another family representative said it was unfortunate attention was being focused on one incident.

"The complete story of her capture is a very painful one for Jessica," family spokeswoman Aly Goodwin Gregg told the AP. "However, she felt it was important to tell her story so that people fully understand the atrocities of war. But her story is more than just one incident."

Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards would not elaborate, telling The Associated Press that it was "just one chapter in a vivid story of a soldier's life."

Bragg declined to comment to the AP.

Sawyer's interview with Lynch will air Tuesday in a special edition of ABC's "Primetime."

Sawyer also addressed reports that Lynch's book casts doubt on the claim of an Iraqi lawyer, Muhammad al-Rehaief, that he helped U.S. Marines rescue Lynch.

"She says that he may indeed have helped her," Sawyer said. "If he did, she's grateful, but she simply does not remember him and she remembers most everybody that she spent time with during her hospital captivity."

Lynch, 20, was shipped to Kuwait in January with the 507th Maintenance Company. She was captured March 23 after her convoy was ambushed in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. She was rescued from an Iraqi hospital April 1 by U.S. forces.

She plans to marry Army Sgt. Ruben Contreras in June.

Bragg has written several books, including the memoir "All Over but the Shoutin'," and won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 while at The New York Times. He resigned from the Times in May after the newspaper suspended him over a story that carried his byline but was reported largely by a freelancer.

Devildogg4ever
11-06-03, 04:03 PM
It's amazing, she has her memory back, and is still considered 'a hero'!! If she has not done anything like was told, why is she a hero??? Can someone answer this?

Sparrowhawk
11-06-03, 04:18 PM
but hung naked upside down and tortured from the original reports, that came in from Iraqi witnessess..

The mind can hide many things, for her to hide this, only means that it will resurface in her marriage...

TopE-8
11-06-03, 04:34 PM
Why is Jessica being treated any different than any other man or women over there? Just because she was a POW doesn't mean she should be treated like a hero. Good God there are better men and women over there doing there job a hell of lot better than she did or ever will. I do thank her for serving our country God Bless her but she is no different than any other one there.

marinemom
11-06-03, 05:18 PM
Well put Top - how come she gets all the attention?

There was another rescue over there and nothing is said aout those men or the rescuees.

AND she could not even meet the Iraqi hero gave the intel on her when he came to her hometown. No manners, no class

Sparrowhawk
11-06-03, 05:26 PM
we're gona make you an honorary grunt, because I see you have the same keyboard I have.



it never types what I wants to say then mispels and types what I shouldn't ahve said....

:marine:

thedrifter
11-06-03, 06:45 PM
Too Painful’
Jessica Lynch Says She Can't Remember Sexual Assault



Nov. 6 — Former POW Jessica Lynch, whose dramatic rescue offered Americans a glimmer of hope at one of the low points of the Iraq war, discloses in her upcoming biography that she suffered a brutal sexual assault during her captivity in Iraq.

While a medical report indicates that Lynch had been sexually assaulted, Lynch says she has no recollection of the attack. "Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she tells Diane Sawyer in her first interview since her nine-day captivity in Iraq.


I'm No Hero

In the interview, Lynch also clears up conflicting stories about her actions during the March 23 ambush in which Lynch was taken prisoner. Initial reports portrayed the Army supply clerk, then 19, as a hero who was wounded by Iraqi gunfire but kept firing until her ammunition ran out, shooting several Iraqis.

But Lynch confirms that was not the case. She tells Sawyer she was just a soldier in the wrong place at the wrong time, whose gun jammed during the chaos. "I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do," she tells Sawyer in the interview, airing Tuesday, Nov. 11.

"I did not shoot, not a round, nothing," she tells Sawyer. "When we were told to lock and load, that's when my weapon jammed … I did not shoot a single round … I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember."

Lynch, now 20, says she feels hurt to have received praise she says her colleagues deserved. "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. They did not know whether I did that or not. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell that story. So I would have been the only one able to say, 'Yeah, I went down shooting.' But I didn't. I did not."

"I don't look at myself as a hero," she adds. "My heroes are Lori [Pfc. Lori Piestewa], the soldiers that are over there, the soldiers that were in that car beside me, the ones that came and rescued me." Piestewa was one of the 11 members of Lynch's unit, the 507th Maintenance, who were killed in the ambush near the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah.

Lynch, who spent nearly four months in a military hospital in Washington, D.C., after her ordeal, says she still feels like a soldier — and something else. "I'm a survivor, for all the things that I've been through," she tells Sawyer.


Lynch described the moments of the ambush as terror and confusion. "Once it started, it was just chaos," she said, adding, "You could hear them [bullets] bouncing off our vehicle. You could hear people screaming. It was scary, so scary."

She said her convoy was surrounded by Iraqi attackers: "They were coming from everywhere. We had vehicles getting stuck, vehicles running out of gas … our weapons were jamming."

Her unit was ambushed after missing a turn and becoming separated from the convoy they were traveling in. "We weren't thinking quickly. We were so tired, we were hungry … it was just a mistake," Lynch said.

In the chaos of the ambush, Lynch says, she discovered that her gun was jammed and she was unable to defend herself. She was never able to fire her weapon.

She says it may have been Piestewa who fought fiercely and went down firing. "That may have been her. But that wasn't me, and I'm not taking credit for it," Lynch said.

Lynch says she remembers Piestewa protecting her: "She was there for me … She had my back the whole time."


Fearing the Worst

Lynch was held in an Iraqi hospital for nine days after the ambush, and she describes the fear she felt during her captivity as well as the excruciating pain from her injuries. "I couldn't move … It was so horrible, like I've never felt that much pain in my whole entire life."

She said she was never mistreated at the hospital, but she still feared for her life. "I kept repeating, 'Please don't hurt me, please don't hurt me,'" she said.

Lynch said the Iraqi medical staff tried to reassure her, but she was skeptical.

She said she refused the food they offered her, fearing that it could be poisoned or unsanitary. Lynch said no one among the staff at the Iraqi hospital was abusive to her, "no one beat me, no one slapped me, no one, nothing … I mean, I actually had one nurse, that she would sing to me."

At one point, Lynch said, she overheard Iraqi doctors planning to amputate her leg. "I started just crying and screaming and just doing everything that I could … And they just backed off. They took me back up to my room and left me there."


The Rescue

Lynch says that when U.S. special forces burst into the hospital in search of her, her first reaction was panic. "I heard the Americans coming in, 'Get down, get down,' you know. And that's when I started to really panic … that's when I really, I felt like getting down on the ground and crawling under that bed because I didn't know what was about to happen," she said.

She says she heard the U.S. soldiers ask about her, speaking in English, but she was still terrified. "I thought, 'Here it comes.They're about to kill me … It's about to happen.'"

It wasn't until the soldiers spoke to her that she began to feel hope. Lynch said the soldiers told her, "We're American soldiers. We're here to take you home."

She went on: "And I was like, 'Yeah, I'm an American soldier too' … It was obviously a dumb thing to say — 'I'm an American soldier, too' — but it was the first thing that came out of my mind."

One soldier, Lynch said, ripped an American flag off his suit and handed it to her. "I would not let go of his hand. I clenched to his hand because I was not going to let him leave me here. He was going to take me out."

It wasn't until she was being evacuated in a U.S. helicopter, Lynch says, that she felt, "My God, this is real. I'm going home."


The U.S. military filmed the rescue, and U.S. television networks aired the dramatic green night-vision footage repeatedly as they reported how the special forces team, acting on a tip from a brave Iraqi lawyer, engaged in firefights on their way into and out of the hospital.

"I don't think it happened quite like that," Lynch said, "though … anyone, you know, in that kind of situation would obviously go in with force, not knowing who was on the other side of the door."

It later emerged that there were no firefights at the hospital. The hospital staff said there were no Iraqi soldiers there, and questioned the need for the Americans to use force. Lynch told Sawyer she does not remember seeing the lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, who is the focus of a TV movie that is being made without her participation. But if he did help her, she said, she is grateful.

Asked whether the military's portrayal of the rescue bothers her, Lynch said, "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. I mean, yeah, it's wrong … I don't know what they had … or why they filmed it."

But Lynch was unequivocal in her gratitude to the soldiers who rescued her. "All I know was that I was in that hospital hurting … I wanted out of there. It didn't matter to me if they would have came in shirts and blank guns. It wouldn't have mattered to me. I wanted out of there."

"They're the ones that came in to rescue me. Those are my heroes … I'm so thankful that they did what they did. They risked their lives. They didn't know, you know, who was in there."

Lynch told Sawyer she wrote her upcoming biography with journalist Rick Bragg, not for money, but "to let everyone know my side of the story … the soldiers who were beside me in that war and the soldiers that are still over there."

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/Primetime/US/Jessica_Lynch_031106-1.html

Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

jfreas
11-06-03, 06:49 PM
I believe Army stands for "Ain't Ready to be Marines Yet. Lynch is no hero and everyone here knows this. As someone pointed out it's the good ole Media doing their thing. I'm sure she was not treated with kid gloves while she was in their hands and again as someone said it'll come out in time.

Crusader40
11-06-03, 07:07 PM
I think the real hero is written in this story. Doing his job.


Posted on: Monday, November 3, 2003
Ex-POW Jessica Lynch not the only hero of 507th
By Eric Slater
Los Angeles Times
FORT CARSON. Colo. — As former POW Jessica Lynch prepares for the release later this month of her $1 million memoir, the airing of her first TV interview, and a TV movie about the attack on the Army's 507th Maintenance Company, the soldier considered by many to be the 507th's greatest hero enjoys more modest rewards.

After three weeks in captivity Army Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, of Park City, Kan., and other soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company were rescued by U.S. Marines. Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued separately. Advertiser library photo • April 13, 2003
Reduced-priced license plates, just $3, for receiving the Purple Heart and the Prisoner of War medal. A Kansas City Royals game ball. "And I get to go on free trips — that's the best part," Pfc. Patrick Miller, 23, said recently, a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek.
To Topeka for a parade, to Las Vegas for the Academy of Country Music Awards, to Florida soon, he hopes, and Alaska.
At sunrise on the morning of March 23, the vehicles and soldiers of the 507th were being torn apart.
Miller set out alone to wreak havoc on a contingent of Iraqis who were trying to lob mortars on several of the soldiers. The Army says Miller "may have killed as many as nine Iraqi combatants."
With an aversion to bragging, the Kansan has no doubt about what he did or did not do, how many he killed or wounded: "Seven in the mortar pit, one in the tree line, and I ran over one guy."
If it wasn't for his actions during the ambush, which earned Miller one of the military's highest awards, the Silver Star, several soldiers feel certain they would not have survived.
"We were all down, most of us wounded, and I looked up and saw Miller running by, bullets and rockets everywhere," recalled former POW Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30. "I said, 'Miller, get down!' He said, 'I gotta go, I gotta return fire' ... I tell you, Miller, ol' country boy, saved us."
As Lynch, whose rescue from an Iraqi hospital became one of the most dramatic stories of the war, readies for her media blitz, most of her fellow soldiers caught in the ambush have returned to their jobs: cooking, supplying radar parts and toilet paper, fixing broken axles.
They are back making $25,000 or $29,000 a year, some struggling with wounds, memories of imprisonment, and of seeing their friends killed. Eleven soldiers died in the battle, five captured and nine wounded.
Few from the 507th seem to resent the diminutive Lynch's fame and fortune. Separated from the other POWs and badly injured when her Humvee crashed, "Jessica is a hero in every way. Tiny little thing, she survived all that by herself. It's amazing," Johnson said.
The Pentagon and media botched Lynch's story, erroneously reporting that she fought to her last bullet despite gunshot and stab wounds, when in fact she was likely unconscious and probably did not fire a shot, investigators say.
The 18 vehicles and 31 soldiers of the 507th — plus two soldiers from another unit — passed through a dark and quiet Nasiriyah about 5 a.m. The convoy took a now well-known wrong turn. Meanwhile, Iraqi irregular and Fedayeen Saddam fighters prepared an ambush, according to Army investigators and members of the 507th.
At about 7 a.m., as many as 200 Iraqis began firing on the 33 Americans with AK-47s, heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The 507th had a single heavy machine gun, a .50-caliber, which failed immediately.
The convoy broke into three groups, according to the Army investigative report. The first fought its way through the ambush and sped toward nearby Marine Task Force Tarawa, which organized a rescue mission.
In the second group, all five vehicles were quickly riddled with bullet holes and torn apart by rockets, and five of the 10 soldiers were wounded. They would eventually be rescued by the Marines.
At the end of the convoy, the third group was also being devastated by the attackers. Within minutes, several soldiers were dead, with more to die shortly. Lynch was injured — fellow soldiers thought she was dead — after the Humvee she was riding in was hit by an explosive.
Miller was driving a military tow truck when the ambush began, with Sgt. James Riley, 31, in the passenger's seat. The two stopped to pick up Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, and Pvt. Brandon Sloan, whose truck had become stuck in the sand. Under heavy fire, Sloan climbed aboard. Walters disappeared and was later killed. Miller stomped on the throttle.
Moments later, the truck, riddled with bullet holes, began to slow and the three were preparing to jump out when Sloan was shot in the forehead and died instantly. Miller and Riley took off running toward the vehicles of Lynch, Johnson and others. Riley dived behind a truck and took command of several soldiers, most of them wounded. Miller kept running.
The reason, he said, was that he saw an Iraqi dump-truck just on the other side of the highway. He figured he could get the truck running and spirit them away.
As he neared, Miller dropped to his belly and crept up a sand berm. Peeking over the top, he saw the mortar pit right beside the dump truck. And he began his effort to pin down the Iraqi mortar men.
As an Iraqi went to drop a round into the mortar tube, Miller fired and the man fell, he said. His M-16, however, jammed, and for the next hour, Miller would pop up, fire one round, and then drop back behind the berm to manually reload another.
"They didn't realize where the fire was coming from," Miller said. "They just saw their guys fall every time they'd try to set up the mortar."
After nearly an hour of pinning down the men around the mortar, according to investigators, Miller decided it was time to check his back. He swept around, he said, and fired on an Iraqi approaching along a tree line. "That was the last guy I shot."
When he turned back around, Miller said, numerous Iraqi fighters were closing on him. He threw his rifle as far as he could and raised his hands in the air. "I said, 'OK, you win.' I kind of figured they'd shoot me right there, though."
About the same time, Riley, commanding the soldiers that the Iraqis had been trying to kill with the mortar, decided it was time to give up. None of their weapons were working and most of them were wounded. He, too, raised his arms and stepped into the open.
The Iraqis quickly took the Americans prisoner.
The Iraqis wanted to know about Miller's can of Skoal tobacco.
"I told 'em my chew was candy. Two or three of them opened it up and started eating. Idiots," he said with a roll of his eyes. "They saw their breakfasts again."
Over the next three weeks, the Iraqis moved their POWs to seven different locations. In each cell he was kept, Miller carved the name of his wife, Jessa, and two children, Tyler, 4, and Makenzie, 15 months.
Early on an April morning, in a house the POWs would later learn was just outside Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a door flew open and a voice in English commanded everyone to get down. Marines swarmed the room. "If you're an American," one Marine shouted, "stand up."
The POWs were headed home.
Miller has been transferred over the summer to Fort Carlson at the base of Pike's Peak. He moved his family into a small home on the post. He doesn't talk much about what happened.
"It doesn't bother me if I don't think about," Miller said. "So I don't think about it much."


http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Nov/03/mn/mn01a.html

CPLRapoza
11-06-03, 09:36 PM
Shes from West Virgina what do you expect.

MillRatUSMC
11-06-03, 09:52 PM
I for one find the cover-up by the "Army of One" troubling and disgusting.
Especially the rape and if it's true that she was hung upside down naked.
Make a mockery of charging our service people for mishandling of some Iraqi POW.
But the cover-up might be to apeace the fememists.
Who see no danger in women being in the combat zone.
Jessica most likely will have to deal with PTSD from now on.
How will her and her husband have any sexual relations without the memory of that brutal rape.
Her wounds and bones might heal, but the mind might never heal.
We pray for her recovery and hope that she can handle the PTSD.

Semper Fidelis
Ricardo

NEWB
11-06-03, 11:05 PM
You know I have read the above reports and have noticed one very interesting item......Jammed weapons, weapons would not fire. This is very disturbing. While I can only imagine the dust and grit over there, it seems to me that someone, be it the soldier whose weapon it was or the NCOIC of them. Someone was jerking off at the wrong time. I had only one jam in my weapon while in Nam. I never had another one. Plus the one I did have was cleared immediately. What, all they teach is marksmanship, not how to care for the weapons.

I agree with all of you that Lynch is just a puppet in the scheme of it all. But I think that ol'boy from Kansas has the right stuff.

yellowwing
11-07-03, 01:10 AM
Miller's weapon seemed to have worked fine. I heard no reports of jammed weapons from the actions in Basra and Nasiriyah. "Gray sky's are gonna clear up, Put on a happy face!" :)

kubba
11-07-03, 03:35 AM
USMC-FO that was the best yet traffic accident in a bad hood.
Hero? No I am sorry she survived that is what you are suppose to do, survive. She did not take out an enemy tank by her self, she did not rush a machine gun, she did not save anyone.
They made a mistake and put other lives at risk.
I am glad she is alive and doing good. But, please enough with this hero crap.As it has been mentioned what about the guys who went in and got them out?
Have a great weekend guys.
Stan :marine:

kentmitchell
11-07-03, 05:45 AM
From the horse's mouth:
Jessica Lynch's own opinion of the thing as told to Diane Sawyer:
Jessica Lynch criticized military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and recasting her ordeal as patriotic fable... MORE.. Asked by ABCNEWS anchor Diane Sawyer if military's portrayal of rescue bothered her, Lynch said: 'Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong'... Asked how she felt about reports of her heroism: 'It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story. So I would have been the only one able to say, Yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't'... Asked about claims the military exaggerated danger of the rescue mission: 'Yeah, I don't think it happened quite like that'...

Sgt Sostand
11-07-03, 05:59 AM
Here we go again with Jessica A Army of None

Sparrowhawk
11-07-03, 07:07 AM
&lt;hr&gt; <br />
<br />
Jammed weaposn were sometimes caused by who ever loaded the weapon in the heat of battle, not making sure it was seated properly. <br />
<br />
They were hit? Before they were told to lock-n-load?...

Crusader40
11-07-03, 07:17 AM
Sounds like the same garbage that we when I was in Beirut in '83. Couldn't do anything because of the brass. <br />
<br />
&quot;Do no chamber a round unless told to do so by a commissioned officer unless you...

Phantom Blooper
11-07-03, 08:03 AM
Pittsburgh, Pa. Friday, Nov. 7, 2003



Nov 7, 8:13 AM EST

Jessica Lynch Laments Military Portrayal








PALESTINE, W.Va. (AP) -- Former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch said the U.S. military was wrong to manipulate the story of her dramatic rescue and should not have filmed it in the first place.

The 20-year-old private told ABC's Diane Sawyer in a "Primetime" interview to air Tuesday that she was bothered by the military's portrayal of her ordeal.

"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," she said in an excerpt from the interview, posted Friday on the network's Web site.

"It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about," she said.

She also said there was no reason for her rescue from an Iraqi hospital to be filmed. "It's wrong," she said.







The former Army supply clerk suffered broken bones and other injuries when her maintenance convoy was attacked in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah on March 23. U.S. forces rescued Lynch at a Nasiriyah hospital April 1.

Early reports had Lynch fighting her attackers until she ran out of ammunition and suffering knife and bullet wounds. Military officials later acknowledged that Lynch wasn't shot, but was hurt after her Humvee utility vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and crashed into another vehicle.

Lynch told Sawyer she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that her gun jammed during the chaos. "I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do," she said.

"I did not shoot, not a round, nothing ... I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember."

Lynch said she was terrified and feared for her life during her time in the Iraqi hospital, and didn't believe she was being rescued until she was being evacuated in a U.S. helicopter. Then, Lynch said, she felt, "My God, this is real. I'm going home."

Footage of the rescue was aired repeatedly on television networks reporting how a special forces team bravely fought into and out of the hospital.

"I don't think it happened quite like that," Lynch said.

But she praised the soldiers who rescued her. "They're the ones that came in to rescue me. Those are my heroes ... I'm so thankful that they did what they did. They risked their lives. They didn't know, you know, who was in there."

On Thursday, newspaper reports revealed Lynch had been raped during her capture. The assault was revealed in Lynch's authorized biography - "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story." The 207-page book will be released by publisher Alfred A. Knopf on Tuesday, Veterans Day.

Lynch told Sawyer she has no recollection of the attack. "Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she said.

thedrifter
11-07-03, 10:42 AM
Jessica Lynch claims Pentagon used her for propaganda


By Corky Siemaszko, New York Daily News
European edition, Friday, November 7, 2003



Jessica Lynch has angrily accused the Pentagon of using her for propaganda.

The 20-year-old private, portrayed as a female Rambo after she was captured by Iraqis during a blazing gun battle and then freed by American troops, told ABC there was no reason for her rescue from an Iraqi hospital to be filmed.

"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Lynch said in an interview with Diane Sawyer that airs Tuesday, Veterans Day.

"Yeah, it's wrong," Lynch said. "I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things" they said.

That footage of U.S. commandos wheeling a grimacing Lynch to a waiting chopper was among the most dramatic of the war — and helped cement her image as a female warrior.

But Lynch said the true heroes were the soldiers who saved her.

"They're the ones that came in to rescue me," she said. "I'm so thankful that they did what they did; they risked their lives. … They are my heroes."

She also disputed the Pentagon's early version of her capture by Iraqis, which suggested she had heroically defended herself — going down only after firing all her ammo.

Lynch says her M-16 jammed and she never got off a shot.

"My weapon did jam and I did not shoot, not a round, nothing," she said simply.

There was no immediate response from the Pentagon, which awarded Lynch a Purple Heart for her injuries.

ABC released excerpts of Lynch's first television interview yesterday after the Daily News obtained a copy of Lynch's authorized biography and revealed its most shocking secret — that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.

She has no memory of the rape. The book says there was a three-hour gap after her capture, a blank in her mind, during which she was assaulted.

"Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she told Sawyer.

Lynch said she was awakened from her stupor by searing pain.

"I seriously thought I was going to be paralyzed for the rest of my life," she told ABC.

The young soldier said at first she did not trust her Iraqi doctors — and tried to stifle her screams.

Trapped in her bed, Lynch said, she tried to tame her terror by thinking about her family, her fiance, Sgt. Ruben Contreras, and her G.I. buddy Lori Piestewa.

After she was rescued, she learned Piestewa was dead.

In her book, "I Am a Soldier, Too," author Rick Bragg says the scars on Lynch's body and medical records indicate she was anally raped, and he tells the reader to "fill in the blanks of what Jessi lived through on the morning of March 23, 2003."

Lynch says her unit was sent into battle armed only with M-16s — no grenades or anti-tank weapons — and in lumbering trucks that could not keep up with the convoy barreling toward Baghdad.

When the trucks in her unit tried to catch up, radio contact with the main convoy was lost — and so were they.

She was filled with foreboding.

"Jessi's fear of being left behind was beginning to come true," Bragg wrote.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=18553


Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

:no:

Mudwalker
11-07-03, 11:17 AM
As someone who was in An Nasiriyah on the 23rd of March I can shed some light on some of the questions raised.

1. We were told by the Army (3rd ID I think) that An Nasariyah was clear. (Tell that to the 18 Marines who lost their lives later that day) They were about 3 hours ahead of us. As we rolled up toward the Tigris bridge we could see smoke columns in the distance. We had no information that they were missing a resupply convoy. It was later learned that they made a wrong turn. Our lead tank spotted a vehicle speeding toward them then suddenly stop and turn around heading back to the city. This vehicle was one of the vehicles trying to make it back. They ended up stopped at a burning truck where we caught up to them. We secured the area and tended to the wounded and dead. Most of their weapons were unloaded and there was ammo strewn around the cabs of the vehicles, as if they were trying to load their magazines.

2. During the next few days we got intel about americans being held at the hospital. Which hospital was unsure. There were two in Nasiriyah.

3. The Iraqi informant came to us originally, I was fortunate enough to meet him. Once the info was passed the rescue was turned over to SpecOps. We supported the rescue with tanks which did engage in a firefight outside the hospital.

4. It was one of our tank commanders who noticed mounds in the courtyard and grabbed a shovel from his tank and discovered the remains of at least 9 Americans. The Army didn't want anything to do with dead Americans. It seemed to us that they wanted a live one. It's obvious to me that they wanted a media prize.

5. It was later determined that the Iraqi Fedayeen were bolstered by the ease at which they were able to destroy the convoy, causing them to stand their ground when we came through.

USMC-FO
11-07-03, 01:33 PM
Great "intel" and commentary Mudwalker. Much appreciated.

WELCOME HOME !!

Semper Fi !!!

Lock-n-Load
11-07-03, 02:01 PM
:marine: Can't PM...so hopefully, you'll review your last post...Phil, you are all cleared for the Semper Fidelis Society of Boston's [USMC 228th Birthday] bash in Boston 10Nov at the Hynes Convention Center downtown...arrive by 11am and recon table #33 [Medford Police Table]...I have received the OK for you to chowdown with us..glad to have you back on/board again...of the 10 seats...3 are combat Marines of Vietnam War...rest are combat Korean War Marines...Gung-Ho SSGT CHRIS SARNO-USMC FMF:marine:

a911devildog
11-07-03, 05:26 PM
I think Ill wait for the movie about the real heroes, the men who went in and saved her ass.

thedrifter
11-07-03, 06:40 PM
Here we go again..........


Iraqi doctors refute Lynch rape claim

Associated Press

Nasiriyah, Iraq — Iraqi doctors who treated former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch dismissed on Friday claims made in her biography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.

Although Ms. Lynch said she has no memory of the sexual assault, medical records cited in I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story indicate that she was raped and sodomized by her Iraqi captors, according to U.S. media who said they had advance copies.

The book, due to be released Tuesday, covers Ms. Lynch's experiences between March 23 when her 507th Maintenance Company convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah and April 1 when she was evacuated from a hospital by U.S. commandos. It was unclear if the book cites American or Iraqi records.

A family spokesman, Stephen Goodwin, confirmed the book alleges Ms. Lynch was raped.

Ms. Lynch suffered broken bones to her right arm, right leg and thighs and ankle and received a head injury when her Humvee utility vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and crashed into another vehicle. Eleven U.S. soldiers were killed in the attack.

Dr. Mahdi Khafazji, an orthopedic surgeon at Nasiriyah's main hospital performed surgery on Ms. Lynch to repair a fractured femur and said he found no signs that she was raped or sodomized.

Dr. Khafazji, speaking at his private clinic in Nasiriyah, said he examined her extensively and would have detected signs of sexual assault. He said the examination turned up no trace of semen.

Dr. Khafazji said Ms. Lynch was taken first to the Military Hospital, a few hundred metres from the ambush site at around 8 a.m., about an hour after the attack. A few hours later, she was brought to his hospital.

"She was injured at about seven in the morning," he said. "What kind of animal would do it to a person suffering from multiple injuries?"

Dr. Jamal al-Saeidi, a brigadier-general and head of the orthopedic department at the now disbanded Military Hospital, remembers seeing Ms. Lynch's motionless body on a bed in the crowded lobby of his hospital. He said a police van parked outside appeared to have brought her to the hospital.

"When she was brought there she was fighting for her life," said Dr. al-Saeidi at his private clinic. "She was in shock because of the severity of her injury."

He said Ms. Lynch was fully clothed with her field jacket buttoned up. "Her clothes were not torn, buttons had not come off, her pants were zipped up," Dr. al-Saeidi said.

Dr. Al-Saeidi said he found no signs of rape during an examination although he acknowledged he was not looking for signs of sexual assault.

Dr. Lynch had lost more than half of her blood because of a 10- to 15-centimetre long wound on the left side of her head, as well as broken limbs that caused internal bleeding, Dr. al-Saeidi said.

"We had a few minutes, golden minutes to save her," he said.

He rushed her to the operating room, away from the crowded lobby, and gave her intravenous fluid and blood and stitched her head wound.

Another U.S. soldier, Lori Piestewa, died half an hour after arriving at the hospital with Ms. Lynch of severe head injuries, doctors said.

Half an hour after surgery on Ms. Lynch, Dr. al-Saeidi assured her that she was in good hands.

He told her that she had to undergo surgery in a couple of days, but Ms. Lynch said: "-'No, I want to be in the States.'-"

Soon afterward, military intelligence officers came to the hospital to take Ms. Lynch away. Dr. Al-Saeidi told them if she did not get medical attention she would die. They took her to the Saddam Hospital, where she stayed nine days until Iraqi soldiers left the hospital.

Several hours later, American commandos raided the hospital and evacuated her.

"Why are they saying such things?" asked Dr. Khodheir al-Hazbar, the hospital's deputy director. "We were good to her."

In an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, Ms. Lynch said she has no recollection of a rape. "Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she said.

Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer she doesn't remember being slapped or mistreated at the hospital, and she recalled one nurse sang to her.

She also accused the U.S. military of using her capture and dramatic nighttime rescue to sway public support for the war in Iraq.

Video of American commandos whisking Ms. Lynch to a waiting chopper helped cement Ms. Lynch's image as a hero. But in the Primetime interview to be aired on Tuesday, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer there was no reason for her rescue to be filmed.

"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Ms. Lynch said. "It's wrong."

Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that her gun jammed during the chaos of the attack. "I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do," she said.

"I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. ... I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember."


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031107.wlyn1107/BNStory/International/


Sempers,

Roger
:marine:

Phantom Blooper
11-08-03, 11:51 AM
The Rambo who wasn't <br />
November 9, 2003 <br />
The Sun-Herald <br />
<br />
<br />
US Army Private Jessica Lynch in the TV interview with American ABC's Diane Sawyer. Picture: Reuters <br />
<br />
The Pentagon turned Private...

MillRatUSMC
11-08-03, 12:42 PM
What now is the TRUTH?
What is real and what is made-up?
And the truth shall set thee free.
All this is taking a life of it's own.
Much like the Rambo movies.
Soon many won't be able to tell the TRUTH from the FICTION.

Semper Fidelis
Ricardo

Phantom Blooper
11-08-03, 01:41 PM
This is just like the game that is played,where one say's something and by the time it gets to the end it is totally different from the original story.The story changes,depending on the reporter and the paper,thats why I keep posting them.I wonder what Primetime Live has to say,inquiring minds want to know.They are almost as good as the jokes in the Chuckles of the Day Forum. Semper-Fi! Chuck Hall :marine:

firstsgtmike
11-08-03, 03:46 PM
Several months ago I came to a conclusion.

All "news" stories concerning PFC Lynch should start with the same phrase;

"Once upon a time ......................."

2091351
11-08-03, 05:58 PM
W I T F should her alleged hero status have anything to do with this USMC forum?

Take Care-Steve

Sixguns
11-08-03, 06:56 PM
There are several stories here.

One, the Jessica Lynch story: I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was not a hero, merely a scared soldier. I was raped after capture and was later rescued. Since receiving a hero's welcome and the awards of such, I am now too traumatized to return to duty.

Two, The Army of One story: The private did what we train every soldier to do -- Use their head and their weapon to successfully overcome an enemy. It was only after she had exhausted every attept to repell the enemy of superior size and force that she was taken prisoner. Her training kept her alive and contributed to her safe return.

Three, the book and made for TV story: Well, enough said.... In order to sell books and advertising for the show, a dramatic emotional story had to be written and displayed.


I feel badly if in fact this soldier was tortured or raped, but with a Iraqi doctor stating he examined her and found no evidence of rape and another Iraqi lawyer using his own initiative and sense of honor to get word to the Marines that a female prisoner was in the hospital, I am really not sure what to believe.

firstsgtmike
11-08-03, 07:23 PM
Sixguns:

Fill in the blanks:

Once upon a time ................ ........ ........ .......... ...... ... ...... .... ..... ................ ....... ..... ...... ....... ....... ..... ........ ....... ........ .... ...... ... etc. etc.


And they lived happily ever after.

Until Humpty Dumpty said to Ducky Lucky that the sky was falling.

( and if you don't remember that, I'll have my three year old explain it to you.)

Sixguns
11-08-03, 07:44 PM
First Sergeant,

That was a nice story, can I hear another???

SF,

SIXGUNS

Howie
11-09-03, 01:28 AM
I have been wondering that myself. Why not see the man who gave the Marines her where abouts, so the rescue could take place. It does not make any sense, unless we do not have the full story. She is no hero, those who gave the last full measure for freedom are the true heros. May God bleess and comfort their families. This nation and the people of Iraq owe more than can be stated.