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To steal a scenario from the movie, "Wag the Dog" the Bush Administration tried to "Wag the Dog" or sell a war to the American people. One of it's most notorious wags was the selling of the Jessica Lynch rescue or as it was portrayed in "Wag the Dog" the "Old Shoe" story. In the movie a soldier is left behind ala lynch to divert the nations attention from another controversy, just one problem, Ms. Lynch didn't play along she refused to be a pawn for a phony war.
Perhaps the biggest media bungle of the war was the Jessica Lynch story. With confidence in the war waning the Administration needed a hero, they fabricated one in Jessica Lynch. Lynch, a 19 year old Army supply clerk had been captured on March 23rd near Nasiriyah. Reports of her capture and subsequent rescue were molded and shaped by the Administration and its "back pocket" media.
On April 1st the US Central Command released a statement that they had rescued a prisoner of war held by the Iraqii's. The following day the media blitz began with the New York Times leading off with a story about Ms Lynch. In the story an Army official is quoted as saying, "she had been shot multiple times". On April 3rd, the right wing Washington Post ran a story titled, "She Was Fighting to the Death': Details Emerging of W. Va. Soldier's Capture and Rescue". The world's media was having a field day, a true American hero when we needed one most.
Citing "unnamed sources" the Washington Post delivered us Bushes war hero. The problem here was a simple one, the lack of any kind of research and credible witnesses. All of Ms Lynches comrades had either been captured or killed during the assault, all the Post had was it's unnamed source. One news agency, not in the pocket of the Pentagon chose the research route, on May 15th the British Guardian published a different version of the events, "Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars.". The Guardian goes on to say, "Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated".
As the story unfolded we began to learn more and more. First from the staff at the hospital where she was held, and finally from Jessica herself. Dr Harith al-Houssona was quoted as saying, "We gave her three bottles of blood, two of them from the medical staff because there was no blood at this time, I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle. Then I did another examination. There was no shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only RTA, road traffic accident". This what is known in journalism as "primary sources", not sources such as The Washington Post's "unnamed source", sources the Post decided they didn't need because they had been supplied their information by the War Machine. The video shown to the world, shot through night vision, shows America's Hounds of War swooping into the hospital area to "rescue" Ms Lynch. The truth is a much different picture once one uses "primary" sources. Dr Anmar Uday, interviewed by the Guardian is quoted as saying, "We heard the noise of helicopters, they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital." He goes on to say, "It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame." The Pentagon has refuted this last part with the statement, "no soldier would go into a hot zone with blanks". Using that argument how many combat soldiers jump into battle with a video camera set up to shoot in the dark? When asked to release the full video, Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman replied, "I understand there is some conflicting information out there and in due time the full story will be told".
Time had come, Jessica began to tell her story, once again a primary source speaks. According to Jessica she was the only survivor in her Humvee, she was unable to return fire because her M-16 had jammed. She never fired a shot. We don't have The Washington Post's "unnamed source" to question the validity of Jessica's story, we have Jessica herself. The Post's "fighting to the death" unnamed source seems to have disappeared, along with the Post's integrity. "Jessi, crouched in the backseat, her arms around her own shoulders, her forehead on her knees, did not feel the round that finally punctured Lori's control and sent the Humvee bouncing off the road, straight at the five-ton tractor trailer. The last thing she remembered was praying... 'Oh god, get us out of here'", (Rick Bragg, "I Am a Soldier Too, p78). The Pentagon spin of torture and abuse was also refuted by Jessica, ""No one even slapped me... No one asked me anything about our troops. I couldn't answer anyway" (I Am A Soldier Too, p. 115). Jessica has gone on to admonish Bush and the War Machine for using her, "They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff, It hurt in a way, that people would make up stories that they had no truth about." (ABC interview). How does the right wing Bush controlled media spin this? "Rescued POW Jessica Lynch says she can't remember anything about her time in captivity in Iraq -- a huge obstacle for military investigators who were hoping the 19-year-old soldier would be the key to revealing Iraqi war crimes" (Fox News, May 5th, 2003).
And we thought "Wag the Dog" was about the Big Dog, little did we know Hollywood could see into the future.
Michael Harris
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