…. of Jessica Lynch.

Given the amount of previous U.S. media/military/administration hype revolving around the daring rescue of Jessica Lynch followed by the subsequent revelations that she received as good a medical care as was possible given the circumstances and indeed that the Iraqis had tried to get her back to U.S. forces but were shot at for their troubles, anyone giving any thought at all to the current hype about her book has to wonder how much is truth.

Initial U.S. military/media reports had Lynch fighting until the last round and suffering both knife and bullet wounds in a heroic defense…… it later came out that her rifle had jammed, she never got off a shot, and was never shot.

Initial U.S. military/media reports had Lynch suffering stoically without decent medical care…… it later came out that she had received as good medical care as was possible under the circumstances.

The U.S. military/media talked about a daring night time raid to rescue Lynch from where she was held…… it later turned out that if they hadn’t been quite so trigger happy she would have been delivered into U.S. military hands by the Iraqis themselves days before her rescue.

Regardless of her lack of memory of anything that took place we now hear of her rape and brutal treatment cited by “intelligence reports”… countered by the Iraqi doctor who performed surgery on Lynch who found no signs of rape or sodomizing. Lynch says she has no memories of brutality…… she does remember being sung to by an Iraqi nurse.

The U.S. military and Bush’s administration would love for this to be remembered as the heroic last stand, followed by the daring rescue by selfless comrades of a wounded American woman held prisoner without benefit of medical attention, a woman who had been brutally raped, sodomized, and beaten, a story for Americans and the military to rally around in their war on Iraq….. the facts tell a different story.

The saddest and most truthful part of this whole incident is how Lynch, a scared and hurt soldier who (by her own description) was in the wrong place at the wrong time, was used by her government and the military she belonged to as part of the Iraqi demonization process.

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