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v English as usual
Introduction to Ken Kesey
ENG 199. CRN 42271.10:00-11:50 a.m.
MUWH. Mark Chilton.
JUNK Z.'5-Jl IKY 18
English in Summer
2003 SUMMER SESSION • JUNE 23-AUGUST 15
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UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
o
diversity of Oreft0^
Iraqi doctors say rescue
of Lynch was exaggerated
Hugh Dellios and E.A. Torriero
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
NASIRIYAH, Iraq — Despite her
pain and fear, Jessica Lynch sipped
juice and ate biscuits under the
watchful eye of Iraqi doctors and
nurses who shielded her from thugs
during her eight days of captivity in
an Iraqi hospital in March.
On her last night there, when she
would hide beneath her sheets as the
sounds of battle erupted, everyone at
the hospital knew that the feared
Iraqi Fedayecn fighters had fled by
the time U.S. Special Forces troops
arrived to rescue her.
Nonetheless, over the next 24
hours, the world would be intro
duced to Lynch as a plucky heroine
who had “fiercely” fought off her
Iraqi captors before being rescued
in a daring raid by commandos
who purportedly snatched her from
the clutches of Saddam Hussein’s
nastiest henchmen. Her limb frac
tures were reported as “multiple
gunshot wounds.”
It was the stuff of legend, nour
ished by myth.
The story of Jessica Lynch is the
tale of how a modern war icon is
made, and perhaps how easily offi
cials and journalists with different
agendas accepted contradictory,
self-serving versions of what hap
pened to her.
Seven weeks after her dramatic
rescue marked a turning point in
the public relations campaign of
the Iraq war, a return to Nasiriyah
raises questions about the telling of
her story, and about the roles of the
Pentagon and the U.S. news media
in turning the petite 19-year-old
Army private from West Virginia
into the face of good battling evil in
the Iraq war.
The final story has not been told,
and no one contests Lynch’s brav
1
He came to my car window at the stop sign. He screamed that if he saw me
kissing a guy in his neighborhood again, he would kill me. He told me I was
disgusting. When I saw my father at home I had to explain to him why I was
crying. “Disgusting,” he said. Years later, my six-year-old cousin said to me,
“My father says you’re disgusting.” I replied, “Your father’s wrong.”
Join your local queer community at our Love-In Against Hate, a protest
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This celebration of queer relationships and affection will be held
Wednesday, May 28th from 11:00-1:00 in the EMU Amphitheater.
Come support your queer friends.
Allies, now is when we need you.
1
ery during a horrifying ordeal. But
the Iraqi doctors who treated her
tell a less Hollywood-ready version
of her rescue: They say they
worked hard to save her life, they
deny reports that she was slapped
by an Iraqi officer and they say
there was no resistance when the
U.S. forces raided the building.
“The Americans were jumping
over fences and running around,”
said Hassan Hamoud, who lives
nearby. “They could have walked
into the hospital and no one would
have stopped them.”
The Pentagon insists it did not
embellish the Lynch tale when it
first announced the rescue at its
Central Command headquarters
in Doha, Qatar. But a few targeted
whispers to reporters by anony
mous U.S. officials —- about
Lynch’s “to-the-death” gun battle
before she was captured, her sup
posed gunshot wounds and her
mistreatment at the hospital —
set the plate for a feast by televi
sion networks and newspapers
that could not resist such a made
for-TV plot.
“I recognized the pattern: She was
being made into an important sym
bol,” said Robert I vie, an expert in
communication, culture and the
rhetoric of war at Indiana Universi
ty. “She stood for the narrative that
the Bush administration was telling.”
Ultimately, Lynch may not be able
help sort out the real story: Doctors
say she has lost her memory, at least
about the incidents that put her into
the Iraqi hospital.
For the past several weeks,
British and Canadian journalists
have been casting doubts on the
Pentagon’s version of the Lynch
rescue. An intensely skeptical tele
vision documentary aired last week
by the British Broadcasting Corp.
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alleged that the affair was, in the
words of the presenter, “one of the
most stunning pieces of news man
agement yet conceived.”
Pentagon officials say any sugges
tion that the Lynch rescue was con
cocted, or that U.S. commanders
would send troops into the path of
danger solely for a publicity stunt, is
“ridiculous.” They blame any exag
gerations on the media.
In its handling of the story, the
Pentagon was taking its cues from
the White House, which had dis
patched a former Bush election
campaign official to the GENTGOM
base in Doha to manage the daily
briefings to 700 journalists at a me
dia center with a specially built,
$250,000 stage.
Lynch’s April 1 rescue came at a
critical time. Field commanders
were expressing surprise at the Iraqi
resistance, and Lynch went missing
during one of a number of ambush
es that gave the impression that the
U.S. advance was bogging down.
That day’s newspaper front pages
featured a disturbing story of how
U.S. soldiers wiped out an entire
Iraqi family at a road checkpoint.
Just after midnight on April 2,
GENTGOM summoned journalists
back to the base and, after a several
hour wait, informed them about the
first successful rescue mission of an
American POW since World War II.
The next day — the drama en
hanced by night-vision video footage
shot by the rescue team -— Brig.
Gen. Vincent Brooks described the
mission as “a classic operation, done
by some of our nation’s finest war
riors, who are dedicated to never
leaving a comrade behind.”
“There was not a firefight inside of
the building, I will tell you, but there
were firefights outside of the build
ing, getting in and getting out,”
Brooks said, describing how the hos
pital had been converted into an
Iraqi paramilitary base.
Seven weeks later, the staff at Sad
dam Hussein Hospital in Nasiriyah
tell a much more subdued story
about the dangers Lynch faced and
how she was rescued.
Harith al-Houssona, an Iraqi doc
tor, said Iraqi soldiers brought
Lynch into the hospital with a bro
ken right arm, fractures of both
legs, a dislocated right ankle and a
finger-long gash in her head — all
wounds he said were common in
road accident victims.
“There was never a bullet wound,”
said al-Houssona, who operated on
Lynch to install a metal plate in her
leg. “It’s a myth if (someone said)
there was.”
The staff also dismiss as false a
well-publicized story told by an Iraqi
lawyer about how he had seen a
dark-clad man slapping Lynch in her
hospital bed.
The lawyer, who claimed to have
sneaked in and spoken to Lynch,
was credited with saving Lynch’s
life after alerting U.S. soldiers to
her whereabouts. He has since
been given asylum in the United
States, a book contract and a job
offer in Washington.
“I never saw any strangers near Jes
sica,” said Furat Hussein, one of the
nurses. “She was never mistreated.”
At the hospital, the doctors,
nurses and drivers have not seen
the dramatic reports about how
Lynch was saved. They just wish
for some acknowledgment of how
they helped her.
“Just a thank you,” said Hannoon,
the second ambulance driver. “That
would make us very happy.”
© 2003, Chicago Tribune. Distributed
by Knight Ridder/Tribune information
Services.