Posted on 12/30/2003 6:28:04 PM PST by saquin
NEW YORK - Graphic video footage of a badly injured Jessica Lynch and Lori Piestewa, who may have died shortly afterward, was taken by Iraqi state television following the ambush of the soldiers' Army convoy, NBC reported Tuesday night.
The video, aired on "NBC Nightly News," shows the two Army privates at the hospital where they were taken following the March 23 ambush of the 507th Maintenance Co.
The tape was never aired in Iraq, NBC reported.
Piestewa, her face swollen and bruised and her head loosely bandaged, is shown as someone positions her feet, and then her head, for the camera shot. Her lip is shown curling back in an apparent grimace.
Lynch, 20, of Palestine, W.Va., is also shown bandaged, her lip cut.
Neither appears awake or alert.
"I haven't watched it," Piestewa's mother, Percy Piestewa, said when contacted by The Associated Press. "I don't want to talk to any reporters right now."
Telephone messages left with two spokespeople for Lynch's family were not immediately returned.
Iraqi doctors have previously said the women were brought to a private clinic following the ambush, and that Piestewa, a 23-year-old mother of two from Tuba City, Ariz., died half an hour later of severe head injuries.
Lynch and four other soldiers were rescued by U.S. special forces April 1, but 11 of their colleagues died during and after the ambush in Nasiriyeh.
Piestewa was the first U.S. female service member to die in the war.
The identities of Lynch and Piestewa were verified for NBC by Spec. Shoshana Johnson, one of the rescued soldiers.
"It was a little shocking to see Lori, but it also gave me a little peace to know that they tried, they did their best for her," Johnson, 30, of El Paso, Texas, told the network. "I mean, it was obvious they tried to bandage her up and give her medical care."
NBC told the Army it had obtained the tape before airing it so the families of the soldiers could be told first, according to MSNBC.com.
Defense Department spokesman Jim Turner said Tuesday night officials were aware of the Iraqi video, but had not seen it and did not have details about what it contained.
The United States repeatedly bombed Iraqi TV studios after they aired interviews with American prisoners of war. But this tape survived because an employee at the state network kept it at home, NBC reported.
This article does not even make ONE SINGLE REFERENCE to the Iraqi TV footage taken, and aired over Lebanon TV, of close ups of mortal head shots of at least 7 executed Americans in the same area of Iraq.CNN and other US TV networks would not air these in detail...although those with satellite hookups to the Middle East could see the unedited version(s).
These were almost all gruesome head shots, the bodies sprawled of the young soldiers, black and white and latino and I believe one female, out in their uniforms, on the floor of a house somewhere. One of the Iraqi militia kicks one of the bodies and smiles as he rifles through the pockets, taking out personal effects.
Did the MURDERERS of these people ever receive justice? Why doesn't the media report on THIS video clip, instead of focusing on their 'exclusive' clips they are only now receiving.
These reporters are absolutely ghoulish to be approching Pvt. Piestewa's mother with this stuff.
From March 24, 2003 in FR:
"Should USA Target Iraq TV Crews/Reporters For Destruction Due to Graphic POWs Video? AmericanInTokyo ^ | 24 March 2003 | AmericanInTokyo Posted on 03/24/2003 1:05:59 PM EST by AmericanInTokyo "As a recipient of various Arab real-time satellite TV channels, such as al-Jazeera, Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, Egypt Satellite, etc., I have been watching these programs perhaps more than CNN and the others recently, only if for the sole reason I want to find items that are provocative and are not making it into the Western media. If I was looking for 'provocative', I certainly found it by viewing, yesterday morning US time, a live satellite broadcast from LBC which was relaying the IRAQ TV broadcast of frightened US POWs from Texas, and humiliated/disrepected bodies of American heroes that had been shot in the head. My two immediate thoughts after seeing the horrifying, close-up color video from IRAQ TV via LBC, were: 1) GENEVA CONVENTION VIOLATIONS and 2) PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE (TERRORISM) BY THE ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES IRAQ TV is now attempting to cause psychological terror in the West by showing such horrendous, close-up color photos and videos, and humiliating the bodies and memories of the deceased in some building in al Nasiriya. Add to these the other thought I had just this day. In the cases of these videos, and other videos I have been seeing, the reporters for Iraqi TV are in MILITARY UNIFORM. Further, as we all know, Iraqi TV is dictatorship state-run T.V., i.e. it is firmly run by the Saddam Ba'athist Party and is part and parcel of the enemy's information infrastructure. My conclusion to this is, NO MORE PROTECTION. Who out there believes the USA/Allies should embark on a program of locating and eliminating, as our national policy, the reporters and camera crews of the Enemy, IRAQ TV? It is not a difficult stretch to say that Iraq TV will further videotape and show these kinds of scenes in the future, particularly if more American/British POWs are likewise captured and shot. Live POWs are interrogated roughly by the 'TV questioner' who is off camera. These reporters are enemy combatants. Further, since Iraq TV must know the location of Western human shields in Baghdad, they are liable to execute them at an opportune time, and then parade the bodies, broadcasting worldwide, to further effect public opinion in the 'shields' home countries. This must be stopped."
F-ing ghouls... I hate The Press more and more as time goes on...
Who's been saying that?
To support all the losers who have posted on FR that she is some kind of hero, when she herself said she huddled in the bottom of her truck compartment without firing one single shot at the enemy.
The only loser I see is a loser that disrespects our soldiers because they make him feel inadequate. We know that's why you neanderthals post what you do.
This is some of that "excellent care" we heard so much about I guess.
Where are the "usual suspects" now? No comments form them in this thread. I guess they conveniently "won't find" this story, even though it's a Drudge headliner.
Post a story about Lynch going to Disney World or something and they'll flip out. lol
Exactly. They say they're pro-military and what-not, but they are only for those they deem acceptable, no others need apply, no matter what they went through.
Maybe she doesn't want to be around Arabs. There were many WW2 vets that couldn't be around Japanese after the war.
Maybe you should get yourself better informed before you go accusing good people of bad things. Sheesh.
LOL, sorry if I come on too strong, but don't blame it on caffeine, it just comes naturally.
She was at the Gator Bowl parade on Wednesday. I think her home team WVU is in the Gator Bowl later today. I haven't searched here yet, but I would not be surprised to find a Jessica Bashing thread about it momentarily.
Yeah, it's very understandable to me.
Yeah, she's not allowed to do anything but sulk the rest of her life. If she does anything besides sulk, then it makes those that feel inadequate feel worse. lol
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