Posted on 04/24/2007 11:46:49 PM PDT by Star Traveler
US Soldier hailed for bravery in Iraq says Pentagon spin doctors made it all up
By DAVID GARDNER
The American military has been accused of telling lies about two of its most famous soldiers.
Official versions of the rescue of prisoner of war Jessica Lynch and the death of former US football star Pat Tillman turned both into national heroes.
But the propaganda was dismissed as "utter fiction" at a Capitol Hill hearing to expose the false battlefield stories peddled by the Pentagon.
Jessica Lynch, now 23, said she was giving testimony "to set the record straight".
"I'm no hero, the people who served with me who died are the real heroes," she said. "The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype."
She said the stories of derring-do did not apply to her.
The former army private became a celebrity after being taken prisoner as the first wave of U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003.
Military chiefs hailed her a gritty heroine who was only captured after putting up fierce resistance during a gunfight during which she was shot and stabbed.
She was eventually freed in a US raid on a hospital where she was being held captive, the Pentagon said.
But it later emerged that her gun was jammed with sand so she couldn't use it and she was only injured when her vehicle crashed.
There were no Iraqi troops at the Saddam Hussein General Hospital when the Americans carried out their "rescue" and medical staff had unsuccessfully tried to hand over the wounded private to US forces prior to the raid.
Although an authorised book about her ordeal claimed she was raped by enemy soldiers, Iraqi doctors have disputed the allegations and Miss Lynch says she was too traumatised to remember it.
"My parents were hearing the story that I was this little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting. But it wasn't true.
"The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales.
"Why did they lie when the real heroes were my fellow soldiers who rescued others or fought to the death?"
She told Congress she had a sixinch gash in her head and severe back and leg problems from injuries suffered during the battle that killed 11 US troops.
Her testimony began with a recollection of the March 2003 attack. As she and her fellow soldiers drove through Nassiriya, Iraq, they noticed armed men standing on rooftops. Three soldiers were quickly killed when a rocket-propelled-grenade hit their vehicle.
Another eight died in the ensuing fighting. Miss Lynch said she later woke up in hospital. "When I awoke, I did not know where I was. I could not move. I could not call for help. I could not fight," she said.
"The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans."
On April 1, US troops came for her. "A soldier came into the room. He tore the American flag from his uniform, and he handed it to me in my hand and he told me, 'We're American soldiers, and we're here to take you home'. And I looked at him and I said, 'Yes, I'm an American soldier, too'."
"I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity," she added.
"I'm still confused as to why they chose to lie and try to make me a legend when the real heroes were my fellow soldiers that day."
Pat Tillman, 27, became a national hero after he gave up a lucrative contract with the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals to join the US Army and was killed during an ambush in an Afghan mountain pass three years ago.
Tillman, a member of the army's elite Rangers force, was awarded the Silver Star, the military's thirdhighest combat decoration, after the Pentagon said he was killed leading a counter-attack.
The story was revealed as bogus after pressure from Tillman's family. In reality he died as a result of friendly fire.
His brother Kevin - who also joined up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and was in a convoy behind his brother - rejected army claims that the confusion arose because of the fog of war.
He said the Pentagon version was "utter fiction" and charged the military with "intentional falsehoods that meet the legal definition for fraud".
"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," he added.
The committee's Democrat chairman Henry Waxman said: "The bare minimum we owe our soldiers and their families is the truth. That didn't happen for two of the most famous soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars."
--
24/04/07 - News section
--
Find this story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=450509&in_page_id=1770 ©2007 Associated New Media
I remember this story when it was given out to the public. And now..., everyone reads this and says, "What a 'cock and bull' story!" The next time we hear another story like this, it will simply cause people to say, "Well, I remember the last story they gave like that."
Regards,
Star Traveler
Link to story —
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=450509&in_page_id=1770
—
For “cock and bull” —
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcockandbull.html
Happens in all wars. Major Devereaux of Wake Island fame was asked by his interrogators if he really radioed back the defiant message “send more Japs!”. He replied why would he say anything like that? He had more than he could handle! The interrogators had to admit it was good propaganda though.
I can understand that some things get confused in the middle of a big operation and maybe things are exactly right, and then something is repeated — at that time. But, when one makes up stuff, outright, and then continues with it and doesn’t correct it — it simply leads to anything else said by that source to be *not believed* any longer. That’s the problem with not correcting things or continuing with a false story...
Hmmmmm
You said — “They did not lie or exaggerate - it was simply a case of mistaken identification.”
The article quoted Jessica Lynch — “Jessica Lynch, now 23, said she was giving testimony “to set the record straight”.”
So, why is it — that it requires *her* to set the record straight and the U.S. Military can’t do it? If they had set it straight already — then why is she even bothering with this?
Obviously something does not smell right at all, and I’m starting to look at the bottom of my shoes...
Yep, it sounds like people are throwing in there, whatever they think will make a good story for PR and who cares what really happened...
As to the Tillman case, it was probably a white lie to soothe the parents. I understand Tillman’s parents want someone to go to jail for his death, and have speculated that someone within his unit hated his guts and wanted him killed. The problem is that friendly fire deaths often involve really mundane things - mistakes made in the heat of battle - rather than larger conspiracies, and no amount of wishful thinking will change that. Bad things happen to good people in military service. And most of the time, no one is to blame.
Actually, the truth is still being distorted.
The focus was never on her supposed derring do, but on the massacre of her fellows, the search for her, wondering what had become of her, and then finding her.
The nurses can say that they tried to return her, but that doesn’t take anything away from her rescue. The hospital was in a no-go area. They couldn’t just stroll in and take her. They didn’t have certain knowledge of what awaited them. And they already had evidence that the Iraqi militia were using hospitals, including that one, as safe havens and headquarters.
So the interesting story is the Iraqi who got word from his kinfolk who worked at the hospital, and walked through enemy lines to get word out, then returned to reconnoiter several times.
The press started almost immediately to throw dirt on this story, claiming that the rescue was a photo-op, simply because the machine gunners were firing at nothing. They went into a hostile no-go area, mounted a diversion, went in and got her. The rest is press distortion. The idea that there was no danger involved, since there were no troops in the hospital at that moment, doesn’t change the fact that the area was in a hostile zone that they had to cross in order to get there. And we now know, we have plenty of experience now, that you have to move quickly before the fighters know you are there and attack. Choppers make a fat and juicy target. The idea that the rescue was a walk in the park is itself a distortion.
Any idea that she was a hero herself was press hyperbole, which she discounted immediately. In fact, none of them were necessarily heroes, they were caught behind enemy lines and slaughtered by an enemy that doesn’t take prisoners. Why they keep beating this drum, though, is easy enough to see.
As for Pat Tillman’s silver star, the fact remains that he was, in fact, killed leading an attack on the Taliban. His bravery is not in question. That no one wanted to admit the whole truth is not surprising. That the family is playing out its grief in public, raging against Tillman’s fellow soldiers, is sad but understandable. That others are taking advantage of their grief for their own purposes is also unsurprising.
Soldiers die in every war in ways that shouldn’t happen, they die in accidents, they shoot themselves, they get sick, they get run over, they fall out of helicopters. In earlier less bureaucratic wars their deaths might be reported by their buddies as killed-in-action, the family gets a posthumous medal, no need to put too fine a point on it. Turning every battle into a CSI crime scene does nothing to advance the cause for which Tillman died, and will not bring him or anyone else back to life.
Because she's a publicity hound? Because there are a lot of people who assign undue amounts of credibility to low-ranking personnel in the military? Everyone's got an opinion. But not all opinions are equally valid. Or supported by the facts.
You said — “Actually, the truth is still being distorted.”
Does that mean that her testimony that she gave to “set the record straight” is wrong then?
Well, that doesn’t fit the facts. If she was really a publicity hound, then “hero” fits that much better than what she’s saying. If anything she’s *lessening* her publicity, much more than if she maintained the “hero status”. So, that doesn’t fit what I see happening here, with her “setting the record straight”.
As far as her credibility, for one thing she gets a higher mark for actually *discounting* the exagerrated story. That ends up *enhancing* her credibility. Then secondly, let’s say that I’m captured and then rescued — well, then that means that the one *most qualified* to say what happened to me — is — *me*. So, I have the most authoritative account of what happened to *me*.
You are being disingenous.
She is uncomfortable being labeled a hero. Who labeled her as a hero? The press ran with a story that was fragmentary, and then when they got the full story, they made a story out of the fact that they ran with a fragmentary story.
People were deliriously happy for her to come home alive. That is much different from making her a hero. But she has a problem that a lot of soldiers have, she lives with the knowledge that she lived and her friends didn’t. Its important to her that people not make her into a hero. She confuses the joy that people felt at her safe return with adulation, and she confuses distorted press coverage with peoples’ actual opinions.
Actually, if you’ve ever read press coverage about anything you have personal knowledge about, you have probably noticed that they can’t even get the simplest facts right, thats stateside, with every chance to double-check their facts. Its embarrassing. When you realize that they consistently get things wrong that you know about, it has to occur to you that they get about the same percentage wrong about everything else. And they do.
You said — “You are being disingenous.”
Doesn’t look like it from the way I’m reading the story...
And then — “She is uncomfortable being labeled a hero. Who labeled her as a hero? The press ran with a story that was fragmentary, and then when they got the full story, they made a story out of the fact that they ran with a fragmentary story.”
And that enhances her credibility and makes her the *most authoritative* to talk about what happened to her (not anyone else). And thus, she wanted to “set the record straight” and she’s the one that went to the hearings to do that.
And in addition, it would have been a very simple matter for the Pentagon to have “set the record straight” in a press conference if they had wanted to correct any misconceptions. Obviously it took Jessica Lynch to do it for herself...
I am not disputing whether what she said happened to her is true. What I am disputing is that the Pentagon lied about her experience. The Pentagon might have been wrong, but that's different from lying. Lying requires knowing A, but saying B. There is no way she can know that the Pentagon knew she wasn't the hero, but insisted she was anyway.
Salient point. The Army has investigated this particular case ad nauseum and the repercussions are still being felt among the leadership in the SOCOM community. Democrats in Congress are now plowing up the graves to help make a case for impeachment. This is irresponsible, wreckless, and leads to risk aversion by military leadership, which tends to cost more American soldiers their lives thru restrictive ROEs- but then dems are all about risk aversion and using defeat as a method to gain power, all the while claiming to "support the troops" (gag).
You said — “ What I am disputing is that the Pentagon lied about her experience. The Pentagon might have been wrong, but that’s different from lying.”
Well, I suppose it’s a slight bit better to know that they may not be crooks, but simply inept and incompetent at knowing, understanding or gathering the facts in the intervening years — which would then cause me to worry about the “war” and their “fact-gathering” capabilities there...
It’s not too comforting either way... but thank goodness for Jessica Lynch deciding to set the story straight. I guess it takes an individual citizen to do that.
I find this actually pretty generous on the part of the Pentagon. They didn't need Jessica Lynch to be a hero. A real hero was the basis of the initial story, and he was awarded a Silver Star (posthumously). Not that the media bothered publishing that true story - or indeed many of the other stories of true heroism during the campaign. I am glad that Jessica Lynch has come out and set the story straight about what a lousy soldier she was. But for her to turn around and deflect attention from her incompetence and suggest that the Pentagon is a nest of liars is cheek. She's got some nerve.
Well, I say better the truth than not at all, no matter what..., and since she did that, good for her...
It would go better over there if everyone on the ground were to make sure they always told the truth about the matter (whatever they’re involved with). It tends to keep everyone on the straight and narrow that way (from the Pentagon on down) Things work out better that way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.