|
|
| |
SPEAKING
FREELY
Saving Private Lynch (from the media)
By Geoffrey Sherwood
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers
to have their say. Please
click here if you are interested in contributing.
On March 23, 15 soldiers of the US Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, a
non-combat unit of mechanics and other support personnel, were ambushed after
taking a wrong turn while traveling in a convoy near the city of Nasiriyah, in
southern Iraq. Of the 15, nine were killed and six captured. Five of the six
prisoners of war were paraded before Iraqi television cameras - pawns for
propaganda and psychological effect, in the hopes of dampening the American war
spirit. Instantaneously their grubby, somber faces appeared on TVs and in
newspapers worldwide. But it would be the then-unseen sixth POW, Private First
Class Jessica Lynch, a cute-as-a-button, 19-year-old supply clerk from tiny
Palestine, West Virginia, who would ultimately garner the biggest headlines,
and find herself in the middle of a mini-maelstrom - a made-for-(and by)-media
controversy over her dramatic rescue and whether it had been nothing more than
a scripted, Wag the Dog-inspired, Pentagon spectacle - a glorious,
grandiose Washington scheme to sell the war.
Private Lynch was the most seriously injured of those who survived the ambush.
She suffered a deep head laceration, a spinal injury, and leg and arm
fractures, all apparently caused when the vehicle in which she was riding
crashed after coming under attack. Her captors separated her from the other
POWs and eventually brought her to the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah.
About that time, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, a 32-year-old Iraqi lawyer, claims
to have seen a woman's body dragged through the streets of his neighborhood in
Nasiriyah as punishment for waving at a coalition helicopter. Several days
later, Mohammed went to Saddam Hospital to visit his wife, who worked there as
a nurse. Curious about the heightened security in the hospital, he asked a
doctor about it. The doctor replied that there was a female American soldier
there. The two of them went to Private Lynch's room to gawk. Mohammed claims
that he peered through the room's window and witnessed a riveting scene - an
Iraqi colonel slapping Lynch while she lay in bed, immobilized by her injuries.
Mohammed decided that he had witnessed enough brutality, and would do whatever
he could to help Private Lynch.
Risking his life, Mohammed clandestinely contacted US forces just outside of
Nasiriyah. He volunteered to return to the hospital to map the layout, identify
the exact location of Lynch's room, and the locations and number of security
forces in the hospital (he counted 41). By March 30, he had relayed this
information back to US forces, and on April 1, the US Joint Special Operations
Command (Task Force 160) conducted a midnight raid on the hospital and rescued
Private Lynch. During the rescue, US forces were shown where the bodies of nine
American soldiers were buried in shallow graves nearby. Lacking shovels, the
soldiers dug up the bodies with their bare hands. Later it would be determined
that seven of the nine were members of the 507th, killed during or after the
March 23 ambush.
Americans were treated to a short video clip of the rescue, filmed by the
raiding party, and to a heartwarming picture of Private Lynch as she was
whisked away by her rescuers, prone on a gurney, folded US flag laying on her
chest, meekly smiling in spite of her banged-up body and hair-raising
experience. To Americans who vividly remember the botched April 1980 mission to
rescue the American hostages in Iran, Lynch's rescue was a source of joy and
relief. It was also a welcome respite from the predominant media message that
the war in Iraq had become "bogged down".
Two weeks later, there was more good news: in the town of Samarra, 120
kilometers north of Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman led US marines to where the
five other members of the 507th were being held prisoner. The Iraqi guards
released the POWs without incident.
Almost forgotten in the hoopla surrounding the rescue of Private Lynch and
other members of the 507th was the fact that as a result of the rescue mission,
nine American soldiers who were previously "missing" were now confirmed dead
(possibly one has not yet been identified). To some, it seemed unfair and
unseemly that the media hype and public celebration of Lynch's rescue
overwhelmed the expressions of sorrow for Lynch's fallen comrades. But
Americans had been anxiously waiting to revel in some good news for a change.
And revel they did. The Lynch family was inundated with congratulatory gifts
and letters, and scholarship, book and movie offers. Mohammed, too, was
besieged by well-wishers. As a reward for his incredible bravery, Mohammed, his
wife, and five-year-old daughter were granted political asylum in the United
States. And every last West Virginian, from the most inaccessible Appalachian
nook to the Ohio River valley, wants Mohammed at their Fourth of July barbecue
as their adopted "favorite son".
America quickly learned that Jessica Lynch was no ordinary hero. On April 3, a
front-page article in the Washington Post quoted anonymous "US officials" who
claimed that during the ambush Private Lynch had "fought fiercely and shot
several enemy soldiers", and "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she
sustained multiple gunshot wounds". One official gushed, "She was fighting to
the death ... She did not want to be taken alive," and she "was also stabbed
when Iraqi forces closed in on her position". The authors of the article, Susan
Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, did qualify the comments by saying that they were
based on "battlefield intelligence ... which comes from monitored
communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose reliability has yet to
be assessed". They also noted that Pentagon officials had not confirmed any of
the details provided by their anonymous sources.
Americans lovingly, unwittingly dilute the meaning of "hero" by giving this
honorific title to all their military men and women. But if the Post's story
proved to be true, Private Lynch would truly deserve the appellation, and would
become larger-than-life - the Mountain State hellion, a pure-as-pumpkin country
girl turned Artemisia of Halicarnassus.
But the Post's version of events immediately began to fall apart. On April 4,
Colonel David Rubenstein, commander of the US Army hospital in Germany where
Private Lynch was taken, told reporters that there was no evidence that any of
her wounds were caused by gunshots or stabbing. The next day, Lynch's father
reiterated what Rubenstein had said. The accuracy of the entire Post piece was
now called into question. To date, there has been no public information
corroborating the Post's sources' depiction of Private Lynch's actions during
the ambush.
Unwilling to swallow whole the US version of events, a Canadian newspaper, the
Toronto Star, launched its own investigation into the Lynch rescue. On May 5 it
published the results under Mitch Potter's byline. The Star had interviewed a
number of the doctors and staff at the former Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah. Dr
Harith Houssona, who had cared for Private Lynch personally, dropped a
bombshell: "... the Iraqi soldiers and commanders had left the hospital almost
two days [before the rescue] ... The night they left, a few of the senior
medical staff tried to give Jessica back. We carefully moved her out of
intensive care and into an ambulance and began to drive to the Americans, who
were just one kilometer away. But when the ambulance got within 300 meters,
they began to shoot. There wasn't even a chance to tell them, 'We have Jessica.
Take her.'"
The Star also interviewed Hassam Hamoud, 35, a waiter at Nasiriyah's al-Diwan
Restaurant. Hassam claimed that US Special Forces troops and an Arabic
translator approached him shortly before the rescue raid and asked if there
were any Iraqi troops still in the hospital. Hassam told them "No, they're all
gone."
The Star article also claimed that the the hospital staff were very upset at
reports that Private Lynch was physically assaulted while under their care.
They vehemently denied that Lynch was ever accosted while at the hospital. To
the contrary, they say they befriended her and cared for her as though she were
their own kith and kin. She was coddled and doted over and given preferential
treatment throughout her stay.
Dr Mudhafer Raazk, 27, told the Star that a few days after the raid an American
military doctor came to the hospital and thanked the doctors for performing a
"superb surgery" on Private Lynch. Raazk described the American doctor's shock
when told that the Americans could have simply driven up to the front door,
asked for Private Lynch, and the doctors gladly would have handed her over. Dr
Raazk reacted to the American doctor's shock by commenting, "That's when I
realized this rescue probably didn't happen for propaganda reasons. I think
this American army is just such a huge machine, the left hand never knows what
the right hand is doing."
The Star article provided an intriguing perspective of the Lynch rescue that
did not so much contradict earlier versions of the event (aside from the denial
that Lynch had been assaulted), as much as it added heretofore unknown facts or
allegations that might impugn the white-knights-save-damsel-in-distress aura of
the rescue.
Proud of its revisionist scoop, the Star liberally sprinkled the article with
chest-thumping hyperbole: From the headline "The real 'Saving Pte Lynch'" to
the author's broad-brush characterization of prior versions of the rescue as a
grand "myth", the Star could now lay claim to a new myth - the revisionist myth
of the saving of Private Lynch. But questions remained. Which myth would prove
to be more accurate? The Star had not bothered to question Mohammed Odeh
al-Rehaief or the US military (or if they did, they did not mention it in their
article), so the two versions' contradictions remained unresolved.
The British Broadcasting Corp had a hunch that there was more to this story
than met the eye. It did its own investigation for the May 18 airing of its
television program Correspondent. The title the BBC chose for the story
was "War Spin". Veteran BBC correspondent John Kampfner did the reporting. The
Lynch rescue was not the main storyline, but it was the most important of
several examples Kampfner used to support his main allegation that reporting of
the Iraqi war - the images and analysis - was essentially stage-managed by the
US military's Central Command (CentCom) in Doha, Qatar, as part of a master
plan to mold public opinion and create support for the war.
But Kampfner's analysis was flawed on several levels. If CentCom went to great
lengths to manipulate the war reporting, as Kampfner alleges, then it failed
miserably. The first few weeks of the war saw an unending litany of bad news -
some real, some imaginary: the "tough-fighting" Fedayeen were compared to the
Viet Cong; trigger-happy GIs were shooting up carloads of civilians; US bombs
were falling on Iraqi markets; most US military casualties were accurately
reported as the result of friendly fire or other mishaps. If this was how
CentCom intended to sell the war, it was a strange sales pitch.
Another flaw - or rather, a whole series of flaws - involved Kampfner's
reporting of the Lynch rescue. To make the rescue appear to be "war spin",
Kampfner first cites the notorious Post article (which, it should be noted, has
no known link to CentCom). If the Post story were part of some master "spin"
plan, then CentCom (or some mysterious, and quite inept, propaganda proxies)
forgot to include the most obvious parties in their conspiracy - Private
Lynch's family and doctors - who contradicted the Post's assertion that Lynch
had been shot and stabbed. An enormous number of newspaper articles and news
broadcasts reported the clarification of Lynch's physical status. So, CentCom
also failed to include virtually every major news organization on the planet in
their conspiracy.
But this wasn't just CentCom's conspiracy, according to Kampfner. This went all
the way to the highest reaches of the US government and military establishment:
"This was a script ... made by the Pentagon." To flesh out that notion,
Kampfner quotes Lynch's Iraqi doctors describing the hospital raid as "just
like Hollywood movies". Dr Harrith al-Houssona elaborated: "They make a show
for the American attack for the hospital. Action moves like Sylvester Stallone
or Jackie Chan ... with jumping and shouting, breaking the door ..." All this
inexplicable hooliganism and violence to doorknobs when the US forces had
already received incontrovertible intelligence from a stranger on the street -
the Nasiriyah waiter, Hassam Hammoud - that all the bad guys had left the
hospital (Hammoud could not have known whether every last one of the Iraqi
forces had abandoned the entire area surrounding the hospital. But that is one
of the dozens of obvious angles that Kampfner did not bother to cover). What US
military commander would risk the lives of his soldiers, and of Private Lynch,
by casually waltzing up to the hospital front door and asking pretty-please,
might he inquire as to the whereabouts of a stray soldier about yay high? Since
Kampfner consistently ignores obvious explanations, in his toxic imagination
the lack of polite knocking can only be explained as made-for-US-media
theatrics.
One of the most disturbing aspects of Kampfner's reporting is the absence of
any honest attempt to obtain the US military's explanations of its actions
during the hospital raid. Kampfner consistently falls back on the excuse that
he asked the US military for a complete, unedited copy of the video footage of
the raid, filmed by members of the raiding party. He says the unadulterated
video would have given the US military the opportunity to quiet all of the
doubting Thomases. The US military refused his request. Was the request denied
because the military feared that it might compromise US Special Forces tactics,
which are obviously highly classified? We don't know, because Kampfner never
divulges the reasons that his request was denied.
One telling example of how Kampfner uses his failed request for the unedited
video to weasel out of answering questions honestly occurred during a May 20
interview with CNN's Leon Harris:
Harris: "... Are you saying that you believe [the] Iraqi doctor's assessment
that the US troops there were using blanks?"
Kampfner: "Well, that is his assertion ... Give everybody all the unedited
film, the real-time film, as shot by the US military cameraman who was with the
rescue mission, and that will put everybody out of all questions of doubt. They
declined to do that."
It is a fairly simple matter to confirm whether or not the use of blanks by US
Special Forces during a wartime rescue mission is a ludicrous assertion. (It
is.) And it is astoundingly unprofessional for a veteran correspondent not to
pursue the matter further than a facile attempt to obtain an unedited tape of
the raid.
Kampfner's ultimate coup de disgrace was his response to Leon Harris's very
first question:
Harris: "Is it your belief right now based upon your investigation that this
rescue of Lynch was in any way a staged event and not real?"
Kampfner: "No. First things first. Credit where it is due. The Americans had a
legitimate right in getting Lynch out of the hospital in Nasiriyah. They had no
way of knowing what her fate was, whether she was being well or badly treated.
So it is entirely legitimate for any country to want to get its own out as
quickly and as safely as possible. Where we took issue with the official
version as put out by Central Command in Doha to the world's press was the way
the Americans did it. They went in, all guns blazing, helicopters, a great,
heroic rescue mission."
To call this response disingenuous would be a high compliment. No, the rescue
was not staged in any way, says the new-and-improved Kampfner, revising his
revisions, retreating from a reckoning. A week earlier, Kampfner and the BBC
had used every journalistic sleight-of-hand to make the Lynch rescue seem
staged. Read their account and judge for yourself.
Click here.
Cheap Trick No 1: Like real estate, there are three important considerations -
location, location and location. Here's how that journalistic prestidigitation
works in a 22-second span of Kampfner's "War Spin" handiwork. Note the careful
sequence:
John Kampfner: "This was a script made for Hollywood. Made by the Pentagon."
General Vincent Brooks: "Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make
this happen. Loyal to a creed that they know; that they'll never leave a fallen
comrade."
John Kampfner: "But the Jessica Lynch story was not all it seemed."
Dr Anmar Uday: "When they enter they say go, go, go! Wait, wait, wait, wait!
Just like Hollywood movies. Just like Hollywood films."
So the implication is clear - the rescue itself (not just CentCom's description
of it) was stage-managed. The good doctors are then quoted saying that the US
troops needlessly shot blanks, smashed doors when they could have knocked,
rescued Lynch when they could have simply asked for her. It was all for show.
All to provide a dramatic evening newsreel to excite US patriotism and war
fervor. That is the message that Kampfner and the BBC wanted to convey,
spineless denials to CNN notwithstanding.
Cheap Trick No 2: Don't ask questions that will dilute the message. This is
even more important than Cheap Trick No 1. Let the Nasiriyah doctors tell their
story. Let them be the authorities on what is and is not militarily necessary.
Don't question their knowledge of "blanks" or the locations of Iraqi troops or
Fedayeen in the area around the hospital. Kampfner said the doctors had
"arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance". Don't elaborate
on the meaning of "arranged", because then the audience would understand that
the doctors had not contacted the Americans in advance. And don't investigate
the doctors' claim that Americans shot at the ambulance when they tried to
deliver Lynch to them. Don't check the ambulance for bullet holes. Don't check
with military officials to see if perhaps the ambulance had gotten caught in
crossfire. Don't ask why the US troops would conduct a midnight raid rather
than skip-to-my-lou to the front door and knock softly lest they disturb the
peaceful neighborhood. Just tell everyone you tried but failed to get the
unedited video, and leave it at that.
The media has also made a to-do over conflicting stories of Lynch's memory
lapse. No memory of the sordid, made-for-media concoction? How convenient. One
more layer to add to the grand conspiracy. But only if you could care less
about the facts, one of which Kampfner carelessly let slip through: "This is
one of the doctors who treated Jessica when she was brought here, still
unconscious by Iraqi soldiers."
Still unconscious. This jibes with the serious gash on her head. She was
probably knocked cold some time during the ambush. It also jibes with the
accounts that appear to be more careful when describing the extent of her
"memory lapse" as covering a period from the time of the ambush until she awoke
in the hospital in Nasiriyah.
Private First Class Jessica Lynch. Battered in an ambush, then run over by the
media.
There was a 10th casualty of the ambush of the 507th. She appeared in Nasiriyah
in the same condition as Private Lynch's comrades. Dead on arrival. Her body
lies unclaimed on the sunburned soil of Nasiriyah.
Only her homely, unloved name remains: Journalistic Integrity.
Geoffrey Sherwood is based in Towaco, New Jersey.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please
click here if you are interested in contributing.
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
