Saving Private Lynch for Hollywood
Harold Hark
4 April 2003

Listen to this:

Private Jessica Lynch "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting", according to a report in The Washington Post: She Was Fighting to the Death.

Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said. The ambush took place after a 507th convoy, supporting the advancing 3rd Infantry Division, took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah.

"She was fighting to the death," the official said. "She did not want to be taken alive."

Lynch was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position, the official said, noting that initial intelligence reports indicated that she had been stabbed to death. No official gave any indication yesterday, however, that Lynch's wounds had been life-threatening.

Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed. Reports thus far are based on battlefield intelligence, they said, which comes from monitored communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose reliability has yet to be assessed. Pentagon officials said they had heard "rumors" of Lynch's heroics but had no confirmation.

"Talk about spunk!" said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), whom military officials had briefed on the rescue. "She just persevered. It takes that and a tremendous faith that your country is going to come and get you."

What's this? Roberts forgot to mention God!

The trouble with this potential screenplay is that it's not true. At her bedside in a military hospital in Germany, her father, Greg Lynch Sr, says: "We have heard and seen reports that she had multiple gunshot wounds and a knife stabbing. The doctor has not seen any of this," There's no entry (wounds) whatsoever." Rescued POW Lynch Undergoes Back Surgery.

Private Lynch is undergoing surgery for two broken legs and a broken right arm, wounds sustained during or after her capture and subsequent rescue by Special Operations commandos from her incarceration at Saddam Hussein Hospital in Nasiriyah. She reported having no feeling in her back.

These are serious enough wounds without the embellishments being layed on for the sake of wartime propaganda. Regardless of the extent of her participation in the battle resulting in her capture and the deaths of her fellow soldiers, she has justifiably earned her status as a hero.

But that status will be forever tainted by the theatrics emanating from a war machine desperate for positive morale reinforcement. Americans at home will have initially responded with a massive outpouring of patriotic fervour, only to be let down with a deflated "Oh..."

In Australia, a country not given to hysterical patriotism, the delivery of the story, as relayed above, would have been met with the will to believe it, modified by innate scepticism.

Private Lynch has simply been used. First, as gun fodder for the blatant empire building of the Bush Administration, and secondly, as sheer, unadulterated grist for Bush's propaganda machine. The story is a lie, as is just about everything else coming from these insane coup leaders.

A shame, really. Her story could have been the first epic of the Iraqi war to be churned out by Hollywood. What am I saying? It will be ready for next year's Oscars.

We all wish Private Lynch well, and fervently hope that nothing worse happened to her at the hands of the Iraqis.

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