Blitzer now calling Jessica Lynch a "former hostage"

[Guaranteed]

Remember when she was a POW?

God DAMMIT the LIES are fucking DISGUSTING.

[erformc]

1. Um...

not to be a jerk, but what was she?

[BlueEyedSon]

4. POW, she was not a civilian if I recall

[Guaranteed]

5. It was WAR, remember?

Remember that WE invaded THEIR country? Started a WAR?

On edit: And read the damned post.

[erformc]

29. And most Iraqi's...

are thankful that we did. My bro in law got back about 2 months ago from serving for a year over there. He was in the Sunni Triangle (Ramadi) for 8 mos. He said that 80-90% of the people he encountered were happy we got rid of Saddam, granted, not all are happy being occupied, but they all claim that they are better off now.

He said that damn near everyone he encountered had a child, parent, brother, relative, etc. who was taken away by the "police" never to return. He also brought home some pics of a mass grave he guarded. It was unreal. He said that once the troops saw that they could care less if they ever found WMD's, as they saw that Saddam was another Hitler.

He says that alot of the problems now are that the new marines took the "we want to be your friend" approach, as opposed to being fair, but tough, as in that culture wanting to "be a friend" is viewed as weakness.

[makhno]

30. Reminds me of Fallujah stadium

Let's hope some of our boys bring back pictures of the mass graves at the Fallujah stadium. Too bad not many of those Iraqis who saw the marines as friends will have that opinion now that the I MEF has done some nation building.

[erformc]

32. And what should ....

our Marines have done? Not fought back? And what is your source for the allegation that we put IRaqi's in mass graves? Al Jazeera?

[erformc]

35. And another thing...

let's say some civilians were killed because of our fighting. And let's then be totally blunt about it. The number of Iraqi's killed in the crossfire is surely less than Saddam killed on a daily basis.

[leesa]

54. Man you have zero facts behind you. Faux redux

[erformc]

55. So you think...

all those stories of his torture chambers and the pics of the mass graves (not to mention Halabja) were untrue?

check out this report from Amensty International from 2002 (hope the link works). They are hardly a "right wing" organization and even they recognize the brutality that was life under Saddam.

http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2002.nsf/mde/iraq!Open

[Kathy in Cambridge]

57. Unilateralism: We have NO RIGHT to attack a country pre-emptively

We know that Iraq posed no threat to the US. And there were plenty of WORSE dictators we could have gone after. So, why do you think we went after Saddam?

[erformc]

59. A few reasons...

1. Having a guy like that with WMD's (as everyone thought) or even trying to get them is too dangerous to have happen. Especially given his location and what he could do to the world by using his and the region's oil hostage - which would cause a collapse of the world economy. that and if he got WMD's he could wipe out Israel very easily.

2. He's already shown he could invade one country and use WMD's.

3. He was the easiest to do at the time. I personally think we should have gone after IRan first, Iraq next, then Saudi Arabia. However, I think because of what we've done in Iraq Iran will fall on its own. those kids have no future with the radical mullahs in charge.

4. Iraq was ripe for the picking. Yes, there are worse dictators, like Kim Jong Il, Castro, and various African potenates, but our strategic and geopolitical interestes like more in Iraq.

And just because Kim Jong Il and the others are worse does not mean we should have given Saddam a pass.

[Skittles]

31. THE ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS

CAN YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?????? Also, I highly doubt your BIL could accurately tell us what the Iraqi people think.

[erformc]

33. He could only tell...

what he saw. I've heard similar stories from other soldiers about the Iraqi's disappearing in the middle of the night.

Should Saddam have been allowed to remain in power? The UN? I would be all for that if the UN's last 2 big missions hadn't led to genocidal disasters - Srebrenica and Rwanda.

And was Bush wrong about WMD's. Probably. But did he lie? No. Clinton, the UN, the Brits and everyone thought he had WMD's. The intellegence was bad. Why Tenet hasn't been fired, or why Kerry hasn't called on Bush to give him the axe is beyond me.

kerry could make inroads on foreign policy by hammering Bush on Saudi Arabia and keeping that loser Tenet on board.

[Skittles]

36. well I get letters from soldiers

and they tell me THE IRAQI PEOPLE WANT THEM TO LEAVE. And I don't care WHO thought Saddam MAY have WMD - ONLY BUSH ILLEGALLY INVADED AND IS OCCUPYING IRAQ.

[erformc]

37. Of course...

the Iraqi people would like them to leave. Who likes being occupied. But they don't want them to leave yet. Perhaps you should read this. They're not welcoming us w/roses but they are more optimistic about thier future.


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq (news - web sites) to overthrow Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), the majority of Iraqis say life is better than it was under the former dictator, according to results of an extensive poll released Tuesday.

But many have little faith in occupying troops and the U.S.-led administration -- and nearly one in five say attacks on foreign soldiers in Iraq are justified.

Asked whether their lives were better now than in the spring of 2003, nearly six in ten Iraqis said the situation was somewhat better or much better than it was, according to the survey of 2,500 people conducted for a group of broadcasting organizations by Oxford Research International.

Those responses are likely to come as a positive surprise for coalition forces and the U.S.-led administration in Iraq as they continue to grapple with a determined guerrilla insurgency and widespread social problems a year after Saddam's fall.

Iraqis often complain about a lack of security, the scarcity of jobs and their fears for the future, but the survey suggests that despite this, most feel life has improved.

Asked how things were going in their lives these days, seven in 10 said the situation was very good or quite good, and only 15 percent said things were very bad. Looking ahead, 71 percent said they expected conditions in their lives to be much better or somewhat better a year from now.

But there are grievances and inconsistencies in the way Iraqis feel 12 months after Saddam.

AMBIVALENCE TOWARD OCCUPIERS

One of their chief complaints is about the effectiveness and continued presence of U.S., and British forces in Iraq.

While half of those questioned believe the invasion was the right thing to do, compared with 39 percent who said it was wrong, more than four in 10 said they had no confidence whatsoever in U.S. and British occupation troops, and 51 percent oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq.

That said, Iraqis generally appear to want occupation forces to stay at least until security is restored and an Iraqi government is in place. Only 15 percent say they should leave now.

An Iraqi government is due to take power from July 1 this year, but it is likely to be many more months before security is restored. U.S. and British troops have made plans to maintain a presence in Iraq at least through the end of 2005.

As well as doubts about the ability of foreign troops to restore security -- which more than a fifth say is the single biggest problem in their lives -- Iraqis also have concerns about the capability of the U.S.-led civilian administration.

More than 60 percent say they have not very much or no confidence at all in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), expressing much more confidence in Iraq's religious leaders, the Iraqi police and the United Nations (news - web sites).

Asked whether attacks on coalition forces were justified, 17 percent said yes. Nearly 14 percent said attacks on the CPA were justified. Four percent said attacks on foreigners working for the United Nations and aid agencies were justified.

Almost a year after Saddam's regime fell, which came after nearly three decades of dictatorship, more than four in five Iraqis say they want to have democracy, yet almost as many say they want to have a single strong leader.

Asked how the U.S.-led invasion of their country left them feeling, 41 percent said they felt liberated -- but the same number said they felt humiliated.

[Skittles]

38. ya

I don't believe the polls HERE, let alone the ones from IRAQ. Gee, I wonder how many WOMEN they speak to. Please. I don't believe a damn thing being parroted in support of this invasion.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

40. Is that from Fox News?

You need to provide a link or the mods will delete your post.

And by the way, my nephew and cousin are over there, and have encountered much hostility. Your brother-in-law sounds like he had his head up his ass while he was in Iraq.

[erformc]

42. The link...

was from a Yahoo Reuters report that "no longer exists"so I cut and pasted. It's not as if I was using an unknown news source. It's a Reuters story that does not slant one way or the other.

And wise ass by BIL did encounter hostility, from the people loyal to Saddam who had everything to lose by his removal.

And who the hell are you to say that. His CO got his foot blown off by an roadside bomb and 4 people in his Troop were killed, so it's not like he was sitting in some office.

Think before you speak.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

43. I wasn't insulting your brother-in-law

just merely questioning his existence.

[erformc]

44. OK, you got me..

I have nothing better to do than invent him and say how wonderful things are going in IRaq. Please.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

45. Wouldn't be the first time someone of your ilk tried to make a point

by inventing some hypothetical situation. Have a nice-if quite brief-stay at DU.

[erformc]

46. Do you really think..

that if I was being a "troll" or something like that I would be replying to this stuff you and skittles are spouting. I've actually found some intellegent discussion going on here that does not include "Bush=Hitler or Mussolini"

[Kathy in Cambridge]

47. I am not spouting talking points

I'm drawing historical parallels. I have a masters in history and form my opinion from extensive reading rather than from the Drudge Report and Washington Times.

Maybe you should attempt to read about the formation of the Nazi party, as well as Fascist Italy. You will see some parallels. PARALLELS-I AM NOT SAYING THAT BUSH IS HITLER! So PLEASE cease the personal attacks.

[erformc]

49. No parallels

the Nazi party and Mussolini's party were, in essence, their own creations borne out of the then existign conditions in each of their countries and then both destroyed when these guys died (Although I am sad to say that my ancestors in Italy have not done a good job of keeping a stable govt. since then - their govt. is like the FLA weather - if you don't like it wait 5 minutes).

Both govt's basically got rid of their internal opponents by force and allowed no criticism.

The GOP (and the Democrats) have been around for years and years, and whoever wins or loses in 04, 08, 12, etc. those parties are going to be around for years. None of the parties is dependent on one person, and if there really were parallels, this website wouldn't exits and its founder would be in a grave or camp somewhere.

[Guaranteed]

50. So anyway, how do you explain the terms changing?

Remember her being a POW? Now she's a "former hostage?" How can that be? How EXACTLY do you explain that and then go around saying that the media is "librul?"

[erformc]

51. If I could...

get into the media's head I could answer the qeustion. Believe me, I hold no brief for them. I do know the DOD or someone in the Pentagon really screwed up when her story came out and the Wash. Post ran a story that she was shooting people when it turns out this wasn't true and that she really had no memory of what happened. I think someone tried to use her as a pawn, and she's paying the price.

But to me, if someone is shooting at you, and a bunch of your fellow soldiers are killed, then it's a war, and if those people who were doing the shooting at you get you, you are a prisoner of war.

[wtmusic]

56. You are out of your mind

You want parallels?

http://www.thomhartmann.com/democracyfailed.shtml

[Guaranteed]

41. Okay, then...so let's give them their country and leave!

On edit: BTW, that's no justification considering the situation that we're in, fighting the war on terror. 150,000 troops sent to Iraq, 700 million dollars taken from Afghanistan, which is where the REAL terrorism is stemming from? FUCK that.

[Ms. Clio]

48. transparent attempt to muddle the point

First you pretend that you don't know that Lynch was a POW, then when someone points out that she was a soldier captured during a war, not a civilian in a hostage situation, you immediately start babbling about happy Iraqis and offensive ethnocentric BS about a culture and a people you obviously know jackshit about.

Feh.

[Guaranteed]

52. LOL Let's free those terrorist bastards

Boy, are they ever going to hate the freedom that we bestow upon them!

[number6]

58. don't buy it

80% - 90%

better off now? , seen the news lately

[Skittles]

7. she was treated in a hospital

she was never a POW

[BlueEyedSon]

8. Ok, then i guess she wasnt a "hostage" either.

[Spirochete]

39. She wasn't a hostage

until she got back over here.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

16. she is a former patient

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. That's incorrect....she was captured with the other survivors from her...

...ambushed unit. Her captors made the decision to get her to the nearest hospital for immediate treatment. By the time she was "rescued", the hospital had fallen behind American lines. At the moment the hospital fell into friendly territory she was technically no longer a POW.

[Skittles]

28. she was never held hostage or prisoner

she was taken straight to the hospital; her injuries were quite severe.

[peacetalksforall]

24. She was a casualty of a road accident and temporarily out of

contact, you might say she was a fairly-quickly-found mia. Now, at long last, we have learned that Wolf exaggerates!

I want the propagandists to stop saying soldiers when they are referring to soldiers of fortune.

There is a big difference between our enlisted youngsters and a professional soldier. In more ways than money.

Saying soldier makes a big difference in how I feel about the plight and destiny of the person they're talking about.

[leesa]

53. Thank you for not being a jerk. Are hostages usually delivered via

ambulance to the enemy?? The Iraqi medical team tried to return her to the US military but they were fired upon. No, I don't think she was a hostage.

[madmax]

2. Yes, and why is Maupin

considered kidnapped and not a POW? This 'new' war has all 'new terms'.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

20. For the same reason that we decided to send "detainees" to Gitmo...

...they're using the same tactic and rubbing our noses in it.

[KissMyAsscroft]

3. I love how that story blew up in their face.

It makes me laugh every time I think about it.

[shance]

6. Its like they are making stuff up as they go....this is getting pretty

scary. Pretty delusional stuff.

Next Jessica will be a former Ms. USA contestant.

[BlueEyedSon]

9. No, I believe she worked for the US embassy.

She was the AMBASSADOR... yeah, thats the ticket!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

10. "Jessica Lynch for $800, Alex."

Edit:

"The answer is: The former status of Jessica Lynch."

"What is former hostage."

"Ooooh, I'm sorry. That is wrong."

[Lindsay]

11. I think the reason Maupin is considered a hostage

is that the Iraqui combatants are not considered offically Iraqui troops, supported by the state, since there is no state.

Heck, it's our war, so we get to make the definitions...right?

(But yeah, Lynch was a POW.)

[Guaranteed]

14. But it's still a war.

It depends on who he is captured by. If he's captured by terrorists who blow up Iraqi buildings with Iraqis in them, he's a hostage.

If he's captured by the folks that are attacking American soldiers and convoys, then he's a POW.

It seems to be the latter, to me.

Again, it's the Bush administration trying to confuse the issue by substituting "terrorist" for "opposition." That's pretty unfortunate, because in overusing the word "terrorist" it loses its force and meaning.

[radwriter0555]

12. er she was never a POW actually.

She was just an accident victim in an iraqi hospital.

[BlueEyedSon]

13. So there was no "rescue", she just checked herself out!

[Guaranteed]

15. The point is that a year ago they had been calling her a POW

NOW their story has changed, and she was a hostage.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. Uh...she was injured while the rest of her unit was being shot to pieces..

...and she was captured along with the other survivors.

[Earth_First]

17. Instant "hero"

What about the other seven POWs from the initial ground invasion? Why aren't they being heralded as Iraq War POW heros in the same light that Lynch and Johnson have been? Why does PFC Lynch become the 'poster child' for the soldiers who were taken 'hostage' during the initial siege on Baghdad? Who decides such things? Ally Gregg, Lynch's publicist? The Department of Defense? * himself?

The entire Jessica Lynch story bothers me incredibly. While I admire her ambition and service to our country, the entire situation is a joke.

[debsianben]

18. Down the Memory Hole

I'm starting to feel like the Empire apologists at Fox News (and for that matter, CNN, which is indistinguishable in content lately) are putting something in the drinking water that blows the shit out of their viewers' short-term memory so they can't call them on their garbage. This Jessica Lynch stuff is a perfect example.

Remember when the Iraqi people were supposed to welcome the troops as liberators? Never happened, but that's OK, because the prediction happened too long ago for any one to remember.

Remember when Al Queda were supposedly streaming into Iraq? Well, not a single damn one of the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis detained, "interrogated" or killed by US forces has been found to be Al Queda, but no one's paying attention and nobody remembers.

Remember the pathetically tiny crowd of (at any EXTREMELY generous outside estime) maybe a couple of hundred Iraqis watching the statue of Saddam Hussein get toppled. In a city of millions of people, that's worse than nothing, but it's OK--it happened more than six months ago, everybody's had their memories erased, and now the hacks at CNN can claim that the recent turmoil contrasts with the welcome we supposedly received in Baghdad originally without fear of any one bringing up the fact that there never was any welcome in Baghdad.

Or the "Sunni triangle?" As recently as TWO WEEKS AGO, the never ending garbage of the right-wing hacks was that reistance to the occupation was all about the (largely mythical in any case) "Sunni triangle," seat of Saddam's loyalists and supposed beneficiary of the old regime. Since then, a mass-based popular uprising has broken up, Sunni and Shiite hand in hand, Sadr City to Falluja to Najaf, LED BY SHIITES, an uprising whose most organized element is Shiite and which even the most moderate Shiite leaders refused to condemn. What happened to the Sunni triangle? Do all of the pundits and talking heads and "expert commentators" who spent months telling us about it on TV have to admit they were wrong? Should we be expecting a mea culpa from Tom Friedman, admitting that he was taken for a ride and that the insurgency is not a matter of Sunni Ba'athists defending their privileges but the Iraqi people fighting for national liberation?

'course not. All of their lies were uttered more than 24 hours ago, so they're down the memory hole and no one who does remember will bring them up.

[LyleNews]

22. This is the same Jessica "Rambo" Lynch that Blizter reported

fired every shell she had, engaged iraqi nationals in knife fights until she was over whelmed by the troops.

Blitzer was on the "front lines" ( in Kuwait ) during the invasion of Iraq.
img src=
Hell, the man is but one of many of Butch's OutHouse press whores.

They've been rolling out everyone on the OutHouse payroll today to stand in front of cameras.

Bartlett's deputy press secretary, De Frances was on Faux News saying Woodward's book shows how decisive Butch is as a "leader".

[ConcernedCanuk]

23. Welll, Actually, - Jessica WAS a Hostage

.
.
.

But her "captors" were the WH "Spin Machine"

Remember the US unit that refused to let the ambulance with Jessica in it pass,

and "refused" to let them "surrender" Jessica over to them?

Well, they had to wait until they got a film crew in there!

Sheesh!

Can't ruin a BFEE Photo Op ya know!

[gottaB]

25. Does Mr. Blitzer's deception about Private Lynch

Make you suspect what he says about other captives?

Are they hostages, or POWs? Can you trust Mr. Blitzer to tell the difference?

I wouldn't.

[Guaranteed]

26. Well, yeah, he was making reference to that American soldier

what's his name...starts with an "M"...anyway, he was saying that that soldier's family was talking with "former hostage" Lynch's family.

Just ridiculous.

[gottaB]

27. Media techniques of humanization are predictably crude

Because they are inversions of the dehumanizations that preceeded them. The dehumanizations of the enemy were blatant in their barbarism, indeed, they celebrated the barbaric and made a mockery of the intelligible. That intelligibility became, in Mr. Blitzer's circle, the point of the exercize--assuming, of course, that Mr. Blitzer is a propagandist, complicit in the deception of the public, but not one of the creatives from Public Affairs. For the military, the point is to soften the public, and they should always be aware that their missions have military objectives, and indeed present one facet of the general application of force. How do patriots rationalize such treasonous hostility towards the public? The creatives could never be expected to act responsibly. Who let them loose on the public? And the Mr. Blitzers, their confusion is understandable, which isn't to say their deceits should be easily forgiven, or weren't deployed for other self-serving reasons.--Dinner time.

[GreenPartyVoter]

34. Next she'll be a "tourist who got lost in a dangerous area".