Free Republic

<p>LAKE JUNALUSKA - Marine Capt. Thomas "Tad" Douglas has plenty to remember from his combat tour in Iraq this past spring.</p> <p>Douglas led his platoon on 22 reconnaissance missions, including one that provided surveillance and sniper coverage of the hospital where Special Forces troops rescued prisoner of war Jessica Lynch. That mission was considered by the Marine Corps to be a "heroic achievement" worthy of a Bronze Star medal.</p>

Writing in the Orlando Sentinel, Kathleen Parker explained that Jessica Lynch joined the Army to get the college tuition she needed to become a kindergarten teacher. Lynch wasn't looking for an assignment the Army never told her might put her into the combat situation that nearly cost her life, and left her shattered and crippled. And Lynch was put into that situation because the Pentagon has caved in to feminist pressure. Many veterans and observers have protested Lynch's "hero" status, and Parker feels Jessica Lynch's book is far from the story of a regular soldier, but rather "... the hijacked...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) -- Reviews have been mixed and the facts are in question, but the authorized biography of Pfc. Jessica Lynch will still claim a cherished position in the publishing industry: No. 1 on The New York Times' list of nonfiction best sellers.</p>

The real story within the "real" story of Jessica Lynch seems yet untold despite a made-for-TV movie and a book by former New York Times golden yarn-spinner Rick Bragg. Both the movie, "Saving Private Lynch," and the book, "I Am a Soldier, Too" have sparked discussions about the young Lynch's relative heroism and what really happened to the 507th Maintenance Company to which she belonged.

It is an odd phenomenon that a nation immersed in a war for civilization itself is inspired more by the capture of a soldier than by a soldier who prevents capture by enemy forces. I’m speaking of course about Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who is currently enjoying the spoils of media celebrity, and Lt. Col. Allen West, who is right now being punished for brilliantly thwarting an ambush against his troops in Iraq. To be fair, it isn’t surprising that the media has jumped all over the Jessica Lynch story. Pretty, young, and blonde are three attributes not uncommon to...

Jessica Lynch Too Ill to Tour She's postponing a TV appearance, other events. NEW YORK (Nov. 17) - Pfc. Jessica Lynch has the flu and had to postpone several promotional appearances for her book, "I Am a Soldier, Too," her publicist said Monday. "The only appearances she's making the next few days will be with her doctor and her physical therapist," said Paul Bogaards, executive director for Alfred A. Knopf, which released the book last Tuesday, Veteran's Day. After interviews last week with Katie Couric, David Letterman and others, the 20-year-old Lynch is back home with her parents in Palestine,...

The selling of America's most famous POW began in earnest this week. A half-million copies of Rick Bragg's authorized biography, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story (Knopf, $23.95), went on sale as Jessica Lynch began a slew of TV appearances. A national book tour is also planned for Lynch and Bragg. Lynch's account of her capture and rescue is not nearly as dramatic as early - and false - reports, which had her fighting off Iraqi attackers like a female Rambo. That doesn't mean it's not a compelling story. The book, which draws from interviews with the...

I was amazed by the response I got to last week’s column. I wrote about a report on CBS’s "The Early Show" concerning a young man named Brian Simpson. Simpson had so severe a case of asthma that doctors despaired of his ever living a normal life. In fact, they despaired of his living a normal life span; they feared he would die in a few more years, and that he would be terribly incapacitated in the interim. To make the time remaining to him as pleasant as possible, Simpson turned to the oboe. It seemed a perverse idea. Oboes...

<p>Jessica Lynch may have been the victim of an extremely bad car crash in Iraq, but she has had to endure a demolition derby of type-casting ever since. Patriotic heroine, propaganda tool, overnight millionairess, sexual-assault victim, media darling, anti-warrior, photographer's vamp -- it's all been projected on her. Some of it might even be deserved, but it doesn't matter. Whether she likes it or not, Jessica Lynch comprises enough cultural personae to keep Camille Paglia occupied for the next decade. And all because someone missed a turn on the road to Baghdad.</p>

It was an easy story to write: Wholesome 19-year-old from rural West Virginia dreams of becoming a kindergarten teacher but, in a brutal early twist of the Iraq war, becomes the Barbie doll symbol of the new American veteran. U.S. Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, now 20, was frail, heroic, patriotic, blonde. She was a victim rescued on dramatic video, so print, broadcast and online journalists ate up her capture and rescue like hyenas. In the process, they skipped a story that wasn't as easy to write: a married, African-American mother of a toddler, an immigrant from Panama living in Texas,...

<p>November 12, 2003 -- The soldiers who sold nude photos of Jessica Lynch to a porn magazine did it to show "she's not all apple pie," publisher Larry Flynt said yesterday. Flynt bought the revealing photos two weeks ago to print in Hustler, but changed his mind last week, he said.</p>

Have you heard of Army Sgt. Casaundra Grant? Probably not, because her story has been largely ignored by the press. She's a 25-year-old single mother who lost both of her legs during the Iraq War when she was accidentally pinned under a tank. Her 2-year-old son "prayed for her legs" the first time he saw her stumps. Grant is upbeat and grateful to be alive, reports the San Antonio Express-News, but is this really the way we want to fight our wars, with young mothers coming home in wheelchairs? (By the way, has anyone noticed how many of our women...

GMC bars media from speech by Lynch rescue pilot By Rob Peecher Telegraph Staff Writer MILLEDGEVILLE - Officials at Georgia Military College turned away reporters and photographers who were invited to hear a speech Wednesday by a helicopter pilot involved in the rescue of Jessica Lynch. Col. Jim LeBrun, the principal of GMC's high school, and Janeen Smith, the public relations director for the school, stopped members of the media outside the auditorium with "bad news." LeBrun said Marine Maj. Craig Kopel told them before giving the speech that he would not speak if any members of the media were...

SISTERS IN ARMS In the Lynch case, cute, blonde, young, and single is what counts. It meant no one had to tell unpleasant stories about a single mom leaving children behind to go to war. In the NBC movie Lynch's best friend, single mom Lori Piestewa, who is later killed, has taped pictures of her two young children to the dashboard of the truck she is driving. (Somehow that doesn't sound like a Hollywood gimmick. It rings true with every mom I know. ) This is who we are deliberately and unnecessarily sending into harm's way? Single moms with pictures...

NEW YORK - Television viewers preferred the real Jessica Lynch to the fictional one. An estimated 15.7 million people watched Diane Sawyer interview the former prisoner of war in a 90-minute ABC News special on Tuesday, Nielsen Media Research said Wednesday. That compares to the 14.9 million people who watched NBC's movie, "Saving Jessica Lynch," on Sunday.

The Jessica Lynch story has vividly proven why women in combat (or combat support, "where there is substantial risk of capture") is a really dumb--and in fact destructive--idea. If you agree with the points below, please click here to sign the petition to President Bush. Petition to President George W. Bush Whereas, the nation is proud of the men and women who are serving their country well in the War on Terrorism, and the Commander-in-Chief who leads them; and Whereas, some activists are trying to use the capture, serious injury, and/or death of female enlisted soldiers in a support unit...

Jessica Lynch just completed an interview on The Today Show with Katie Couric. Lynch was accompanied by Rick Bragg, author of her authorized story: "I am a Soldier Too." The bottom line is that very few if any details emerged from the interview. As Bragg (who came across as a decent, smart, down-to-earth, patriotic guy) said, despite endless hours of interviews with Lynch, she simply remembers nothing from the time her Humvee was hit until she woke up in the hospital hours later. She has no recollection of who fired on the Humvee, what it was hit with, how she...

THE Pentagon's shy poster girl for Operation Iraqi Freedom, former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch is now trawling for publicity. What is at stake now is not a nation's morale, boosted by dramatised and exaggerated accounts of her April rescue, but her share in a $1.4 million book deal that looks set to overshadow Veterans' Day. Ms Lynch began the publicity trail with a Sunday night telemovie, Saving Jessica Lynch. Yesterday she and fellow PoW Shoshana Johnson were at Glamour magazine's awards night where they were named Women of the Year. The 20-year-old has also recorded an interview with...

Jessica Lynch on now until 10 PM CST....good interview

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Despite a media blitz, the biography of America's best-known soldier from the Iraq (news - web sites) war, Jessica Lynch, appeared unlikely on Tuesday to translate into big cash as the first day of sales fell short of expectations. After days of magazine covers, TV movies, tabloid tales and television interviews, first-day sales of her authorized biography, "I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story," fell well short of other high-profile books like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites)'s memoir, which had buyers lining up around the block. Not a copy had been...