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*.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.
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.
They knew and they let it spin out of control with some help from Pentagon PR people. This story was deliberately embellished by the Pentagon. FWIW the real heroes in this story are the male soldiers that died and the Black woman who actually fired her weapon.