"Brian" wrote in message .. .
Did I hear correctly on the news that PFC Lynch was awarded a Bronze Star
along with a POW Medal and Purple Heart? I can understand the last two but a
freakin Bronze Star? What act of heroism did she perform? Don't get me
wrong, I'm not saying she did anything wrong but isn't the Army getting a
little generous with the Bronze Star?

http://www.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_arti...=13353&lang=en

What Really Happened to Jessica Lynch?

As Private Jessica Lynch arrives in West Virgina Democracy Now! takes
a look at the media coverage of her capture and "rescue" in Iraq. We
speak with Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler and listen to an
earlier interview with London Times reporter Richard Lloyd Parry.

Private Jessica Lynch is home. She arrived to her rural West Virginia
community yesterday amid bristling flags, yellow ribbons and TV news
trucks.

She suffers from multiple broken bones and other injuries and is able
to walk with the aid of a walker but still has trouble standing.

On Monday, she was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Prisoner
of War medals.

Jessica Lynch first gained national headlines when she was captured in
the first week of the Iraq invasion. On March 23rd, her Army
maintenance unit was ambushed near the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.

11 U.S. soldiers were killed and five others captured in the attack.
Lynch was taken to hospital by Iraqi soldiers and held for 9 days
before being rescued.

The press initially reported that Lynch fought fiercely during the
attack, getting stabbed and shot several times as she fended off her
assailants. News articles described her emptying her M-16 into Iraqi
soldiers, killing several of them before finally being caught.

Initial reports of her subsequent rescue 9 days later were also
dramatic. They described Army Rangers and Navy Seals storming the
Nassiriyah hospital just after midnight. The press reported they came
under fire but managed to find Lynch and whisk her away by helicopter.
A video of the rescue captured by the military's night-vision camera
was released to the public.

Since then, enterprising reporters have shown that the reality of both
her capture and rescue were very different.

New reports concluded that Lynch was injured when her Humvee crashed
into another vehicle in the convoy after being hit by a
rocket-propelled grenade.

Reports also found that the convoy blundered into the ambush after
getting lost and many of the unit's weapons malfunctioned during the
battle.

Of her rescue, Iraqi doctors at the hospital said later that the U.S.
has faced no resistance and the operation had been over-dramatized.

The Washington Post was the first to report the heroic version of
Lynch's capture. The paper came under sharp criticism from its own
ombudsman, Michael Getler, for its handling of the story. He was the
first U.S. journalist to question the original reported version of
events on April 20th. The Post later published a 5,000 word expose on
Lynch's capture completely debunking their original version of the
story.

Days earlier the London Times' Richard Lloyd Parry had exposed the
true story of Lynch's rescue. This was followed by a report from the
BBC's John Kampfner which was widely read.

Jessica Lynch, reading a statement after arriving in Elizabeth, West
Virginia yesterday.
Richard Lloyd Parry, foreign correspondent for the London Times
interviewed on Democracy Now! on April 28th, 2003 regarding his
article in the London Times: "So Who Really Did Save Private Jessica?"
Michael Getler, Washington Post ombudsman.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now! as we turn now to our
second story -- Private Jessica Lynch has come home.

TAPE:

JESSICA LYNCH: Hi, thank you for being here. It's great to be home. I
would like to say thank you to everyone who hoped and prayed for my
safe return. For a long time I had no idea so many people knew I'd
been missing. But I read thousands of letters, many of them from
children, who offered messages of hope and faith. I would like to
thank the people in this community, especially those who gave
donations to the Lynch fund and who volunteered their time and skills
to work on my family's house. Please allow me to thank the doctors,
nurses and staff members of Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the
excellent care they gave me. I would like to thank the staff of
Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany for their care and support. I
would like to thank the Fisher Foundation, Governor Bob Wise and
United States Senator Jay Rockefeller for the roles they played in
helping my family to be with me in Germany and Washington. I'm also
grateful to several Iraqi citizens who helped save my life while I was
in their hospital. And then a unit of our Special Forces soldiers that
saved my life. I want to thank Sgt. Ruben Contreras. Ruben, you never
let me give up. When I wanted to quit p-t (physical therapy), you kept
me going. And you're my inspiration and I love you. I'm proud to be a
soldier in the Army. I'm proud to have served with the 507th. I'm
happy that some of the soldiers I served with made it home alive and
it hurts that some of my company didn't. Most of all, I miss Lori
Piestewa. She was my best friend. She fought beside me and it was an
honor to have served with her. Lori will always remain in my heart. I
read thousands of stories that said when I was captured, I said, "I'm
an American soldier too." Those stories were right. Those were my
words. I am an American soldier too. Thank you for this welcome and
it's great to be home.

AMY GOODMAN: And that was Private Jessica Lynch returning to her rural
West Virginia community yesterday amid rippling flags, yellow ribbons,
TV news trucks. She suffers from multiple broken bones and other
injuries, is able to walk with the aid of a walker but still has
trouble standing. On Monday, she was awarded the Bronze Star, the
Purple Heart, and the Prisoner of War medals. Jessica Lynch first
gained national headlines when she was captured in the first week of
the Iraq invasion. On March 23rd, her Army maintenance unit was
ambushed near the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. 11 U.S. soldiers were
killed and five others captured in the attack. Lynch was taken to
hospital by Iraqi soldiers and held separately for 9 days from other
patients as she was being taken care of by Iraqi doctors. The press
initially reported that Lynch fought fiercely during the attack,
getting stabbed and shot several times as she fended off her
assailants. News articles described her emptying her M-16 into Iraqi
soldiers, killing several of them before finally getting caught. The
initial reports of her subsequent rescue 9 days later were also
dramatic. They described Army Rangers and Navy Seals storming the
Nasiriyah hospital just after midnight. The press reported they came
under fire but managed to find Lynch and whisk her away by helicopter.
The military provided video of the rescue with it's night-vision
camera and released it to the public. Since then, enterprising
reporters have shown, the reality of both Jessica's capture and
rescue, were very different. New reports concluded that Jessica Lynch
was injured when her Humvee crashed into another vehicle in the
convoy. Reports also found that the convoy blundered into the ambush
after getting lost and many of the unit's weapons malfunctioned during
the battle. Of her rescue, Iraqi doctors at the hospital said later
that the U.S. had faced no resistance when they came in.

Lynch herself was not quoted by the television at the time, did not
comment on what had taken place as she was recovering. Although her
father did say, after the Pentagon said she had suffered from amnesia
and could not comment on the attack, her father said she did not
suffer from amnesia.

The Washington Post was the first to report the heroic version of
Lynch's capture. The paper came under sharp criticism from its own
Ombudsman Michael Getler for its handling of the story. He will join
us by telephone, the first US journalist to question the reported
version of events on April 20. The Post later published a 5,000 word
expose on Lynch's capture completely debunking their original version
of the story. We're going go to break. When we come back, we're going
to play the first piece that Democracy Now! ran before the B.B.C. and
Washington Post expose. It was with London Times reporter Richard
Lloyd Perry who found a very different story when he investigated the
so-called rescue of Jessica Lynch from the hospital. That's after this
break.

AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!," The War and Peace
Report. Coming up, Lynne Stewart will join us in just a few minutes. A
judge has dropped terror charges against her. We'll also talk to
congress member Bernie Sanders about the U.S.A. Patriot Act, about a
bill that's been introduced that would take librarians out of the
cross hairs of the bill. But right now we're going to return to that
first report Democracy Now! did with London Times reporter Richard
Lloyd Perry after he visited the hospital in Nasiriyah where Jessica
Lynch was being treated.

TAPE:

RICHARD LLOYD PERRY: When I was in Nasiriyah, this was a week or so
ago, I stayed in the General Hospital, principally that's the safest
place in town, protected both by Iraqis as well as by a small number
of American marines. And while I was staying there, I got to talking
to one of the hospital doctors and asked about Jessica Lynch because
this, of course, was the hospital from which she had been plucked by
U.S. special forces in those very dramatic pictures that were shown
while the war was still going on.
And this doctor and others of his colleagues told a very interesting
story. They, too, had heard the official American version which was
put out in Qatar. And they described the exciting infrared pictures of
special forces going in, walking through the corridor of the hospital,
and carrying this injured woman out. But to them, it was a very -- it
was all rather amusing. They were rather sardonic about it because
they said that among other things, there was no resistance at the
hospital. The Iraqi soldiers and commanders who have been there, had
fled several hours before -- really the day before, so these special
forces didn't have to fight their way in at all. They walked in. And
they also said that although they and civilian doctors had been
struggling really rather hard for a week or so, to save Jessica
Lynch's life and to give her the best treatment that they could, that
they were treated really very badly by these soldiers who came in. A
number of the doctors as well as two patients, including one paralyzed
patient, were handcuffed, shackled to beds, had their hands tied. One
of the senior hospital administrators was actually taken away in the
U.S. special forces helicopters with Jessica Lynch and held for three
days in the prisoner of war pen in the sun. And they felt this was
really very poor treatment for the honest job they had tried to do in
saving her life. At the very least, they were getting little credit
for the job they'd done.

AMY GOODMAN: How did the story we came to know in the United States --
how was it constructed?

RICHARD LLOYD PERRY: Well I saw -- I think like most people on one of
the live briefings from Doha -- I can't remember which particular
general it was doing the briefing, but it clearly -- it came at a
stage in the war when they were a bit short of good news to put out.
And I remember at the time that clearly a lot of thought and
preparation had gone into this -- this presentation. You know the
story was told from the point of view of the rescuing forces. There
was very little mention made of any -- any of the Iraqis in the
hospital or both on the Iraqi side. And it was portrayed as a -- a
very dangerous mission carried out to save this, you know, this young
rather attractive young woman. And it was clearly a P.R. coup at the
time. But it wasn't like that. As far as I can remember, no one at the
time really questioned the Pentagon account that had been put out. And
because there was fighting still going on, it was difficult at that
point to get to the other side. But it struck me as interesting and
significant that these doctors had their own story to tell.

AMY GOODMAN: Richard Lloyd Perry of the London times. He -- he
reported that in the paper on April 16.- We had him on, on April 28.
Just before that, Michael Getler raised a question about his own
newspaper's reporting in The Washington Post. And he joins us on the
line right now. Welcome to Democracy Now!. Michael Getler.

MICHAEL GETLER: Thank you for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. You're the ombudsman of
The Washington Post. Can you talk about the evolution of this story
and how your newspaper and so much of the rest of the press in the
world got this story wrong?

MICHAEL GETLER: Well, I will. I'll be glad to. But I should make one
point on your previous segment --actually The Washington Post, its
initial story was at the heart of when she was first captured, the
heart of this dispute. But on April 15, I think prior to the report
you just aired, it was also Washington Post correspondent Keith
Richberg who got to the hospital in Iraq where Private Lynch was being
held, and reported based on doctors, on the record comments, that she
had not been shot, she hadn't been stabbed, that she was injured in
the humvee accident and that she had been well cared for. So The Post
actually had that story first as well. But the problem was that it was
back on page A-15 or A-17, I don't remember exactly where. It was way
back in the paper and it was based on Iraqi sources and of course, it
didn't get the attention that it otherwise might have gotten. But The
Post did -- the foreign correspondents actually did begin to pick away
at this story before I believe anybody else did.

The original story in The Post appeared on April 3. And it was very
dramatic. It had a headline She was fighting to the death, and it
talked about, as you said earlier that she was part of the ambush, she
continued firing at the Iraqis even after she had sustained multiple
gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers die. That she
actually killed several Iraqis and that she was stabbed as they closed
in to her position. Which was obviously a very, very dramatic story at
the time when there was really no good news coming out of the -- out
of the war front. The original story did have cautions in it, but it
was further down, it made clear that this -- that this information was
coming from sort of battlefield intelligence and monitored
communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose -- they said
whose reliability has yet to be assessed. So, and the Pentagon never
actually confirmed it. They didn't deny it, but they didn't confirm
it.

My initial reaction to the story was that it should have been written
more cautiously because they were these caveats further down in it.
And that the story should not have been presented in what really did
look like a propagandistic-type of account. But in any event, the
reporters clearly were -- were – these are experienced reporters and I
never had any doubt that they were told what they were told. It's a
question initially of whether or not they should have been more
cautious and careful in how it was presented. But the -- very soon
after that first report appeared, there was the -- there was the
report from Germany from the Landstuhl Hospital where Lynch had been
taken, by the commander of the army hospital there, this Colonel David
Rubenstein and he said the medical evidence did not say any of her
wounds were caused by gunshots or stabbing. That also, which I thought
was important, was seriously underplayed by the paper. It was included
inside another story way in the back of the paper. But it was also on
television and readers -- readers of The Post got very angry after
that, where they felt that that original story had been very
misleading and it was propagandized and it looked like an agenda was
being pursued there. And that's when the controversy really took off.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Michael Getler, ombudsman at The
Washington Post. Also very important to point out when this story came
out at the time of this so-called quagmire when the Bush
administration was getting a lot of heat for getting, what looked like
bogged down in Iraq. It was the myth that came out at that time. Also,
now CBS news is apologizing for offering Private Jessica Lynch quite a
deal if they could do the CBS movie on her. They would -- they wanted
to do a CBS news exclusive and they offered her a made for TV movie,
an MTV special that might include a special concert in her hometown.
Now they are saying they may have overstepped when they raised the
possibility of the movie deal and other entertainment-related
incentives. Your response to that?

MICHAEL GETLER: Well, you know, my focus has always been on the
journalism and all the columns I've written about this, I've tried to
make clear that this has nothing to do with Private Lynch who was a
courageous young soldier and who has been through a terrible ordeal no
matter what happened. My concerns have been with the journalism
surrounding the story. And that's where I think there were some flaws.
And The Post. did move to do a very, very lengthy investigative piece
2 1/2 months later that sought to correct the record before the army
investigation came out. I was also somewhat critical of that, because
it actually put the real correction – saying that she wasn't shot, she
wasn't stabbed—actually it was on the jump page on the continuation
inside. And it still didn't quote anybody on that point, even though
there had been a Defense Department official quoted in The New York
Times saying exactly the same thing about four days earlier. And also,
the fault I found, it suggested that The Post was not alone in its
phrasing. It talks about initial news reports including those in The
Washington Post and actually The Post was the exclusive – had the
exclusive on that first story about the details of her capture. So I
really -- I don't want to comment on other news organizations and what
they did or may have done or are planning to do. I think in general,
the press was quite slow to try and go back on this story which seemed
fishy, almost from the start, as soon as Colonel Rubenstein made his
comment.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Getler, thank you for being with us, ombudsman of
The Washington Post.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1
(800) 881-2359.

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../07/23/1558215

Source: Michael Getler/Richard Lloyd Parry/Amy Goodman Demcracy Now!