The Lynch Mob

Posted on July 22, 2003 by Gene

Since the right wing already brands me as “hating America”, can I just take a moment to say… what the hell is the deal with Jessica Lynch?
OK. Let me preface this rant by saying that I regard almost anyone who fights for their country to be a hero. But what in the world is going on with the media and their Jessica Lynch love affair?
Most of the hype surrounding the Lynch story has been discredited – stories of her being held hostage in a hospital are dubious, and when you think about it, she’s been at Walter Reed Medical Center for more than 3 months. Wouldn’t you have thought she could have been transported closer to home in that time? Sounds like she was hostage in THAT hospital to me. Hostage to military and administration spin doctors.
MSNBC, amazingly enough, stepped back from the PFC Lynch Road Show to say:

But even as family and friends welcomed home the 20-year-old supply clerk, media critics said the TV cameras showed not so much the return of an injured soldier as a reality TV drama coproduced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters.

“It no longer matters in America whether something is true or false. The population has been conditioned to accept anything: sentimental stories, lies, atomic bomb threats,” said John MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s magazine.

Lynch was in a 507th Maintenance Company convoy on March 23 when her company was ambushed near the city of Nasiriyah. Eleven soldiers died and nine were wounded in a 90-minute firefight.

Lynch became a national hero after media reports quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying she fought fiercely before being captured, firing on Iraqi forces despite sustaining multiple gunshot and stab wounds.

In the end, Army investigators concluded that Lynch was injured when her Humvee crashed into another vehicle in the convoy after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Far from a scene of battlefield heroism, the Army said the convoy blundered into the ambush after getting lost and many of the unit’s weapons malfunctioned during the battle.

The U.S. military also released video taken during an apparently daring rescue by American special forces who raided the Iraqi hospital where she was being treated.

Iraqi doctors at the hospital said later the U.S. rescuers had faced no resistance and the operation had been over-dramatized. Five other 507th Maintenance Company soldiers who were captured and held apart from Lynch were freed April 13.

The article is accompanied by a photo of a city street sign proclaiming “Home of Jessica Lynch, Ex-POW.” I feel a slight sense of outrage on behalf of true POWs. (By the way – the sign is at the entrance to Elizabeth, WV — Lynch lives in Palestine. In addition, the sign sycophantically says “Compliments of City of Charleston.”)

Well, it’s a public relations necessity for a war such as this – plays well with the folks back home I suppose.