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The Jessica Lynch rescue not as dramatic?
This morning there was this front page news item in my morning paper about the Jessica Lynch resuce story that cast a different light on what actually went on that day.
As you may know, Jesica Lynch was a supply clerk with the Army's 507th Maintenance Company, who ran into an iraqi ambush when her unit made a wrong turn near Nasiriyah on March 23. Initial accounts reported how she was shot and stabbed and continued battling Iraqi fighters until she ran out of ammunition. She was captured and then sent to an Iraqi hospital for treatment of her wounds.
She was then rescued on April 1st amidst spectacualr circumstances, or at least that was what one could read in about every single news paper around the world. Now however, information arises that it wasn't really spectacular or even dramatic at all.
Both Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph reports interviews of the Iraqi doctors who took care of her and the story is quite different. I urge you to read for your self but I'll try to sum it up in a few qoutes:
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From Daily Telegraph
The making of the myth of Jessica began when she was transferred to the hospital by the Iraqi intelligence forces and handed over to the care of Dr Houssona.
"I was terrified when I knew I was going to be her doctor," he said, "because I knew if I put a step wrong I would be killed by the intelligence men."
Despite that fear he did his best to treat her, and risked his life more than once to prevent her removal to Baghdad for interrogation.
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On the day before Jessica's rescue, and under orders to send her by ambulance to a different hospital across the front line, the doctor told paramedics to tell the American guards at the checkpoint they had Jessica and hand her over.
"But when the ambulance approached the checkpoint the American troops shot at it," he said. "So they had to turn back here."
Fourteen hours before Jessica's rescue, the group of Iraqi commanders and intelligence officers who had taken over the hospital left. At midnight on April 1, the assault by the Special Forces began.
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From the Washington Post
"They made a big show," said Haitham Gizzy, a physician at the public hospital here who treated Lynch for her injuries. "It was just a drama," he said. "A big, dramatic show."
Gizzy and other doctors said no Iraqi soldiers or militiamen were at the hospital that night, April 1, when the U.S. Special Operations forces came in helicopters to carry out the midnight rescue. Most of the Saddam's Fedayeen fighters, and the entire Baath Party leadership, including the governor of the province, had come to the hospital earlier in the day, changed into civilian clothes and fled, the doctors said.
"They brought their civilian wear with them," said Mokhdad Abd Hassan, who was on duty that day and evening. He pointed to green army uniforms still piled on the lawn. "You can see their military suits," he said. "They all ran away, the same day."
Lynch's U.S. doctors have said she suffered fractures in her upper right arm, upper left leg, lower left leg and right ankle and foot. Her father, Greg Lynch Sr., told reporters she had no penetration wounds.
"It was a road traffic accident," Gizzy said. "There was not a drop of blood. . . . There were no bullets or shrapnel or anything like that." At the hospital, he said, "She was given special care, more than the Iraqi patients."
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You guys have any comments/thoughts on this?
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