Jessica Lynch Didn’t Follow Script Written For Her: A Unique Form of Bravery
Apr 25th, 2007 | Comments
Telling Truth To Lies on Capitol Hill re Falsified Stories about Her Captivity in Iraq
Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense –shouldn’t he be called to ‘The Hill’ to answer about his oversight, or lack of it, on this matter? and not one more time let ‘the who, what, why, where, how and when’ of this seeming ‘failed publicity stunt’ fall to his subordinates… who are then forced to engage in a circular firing squad using finger pointing as their weaponry of choice?
The military apparently passed wrong information to the national media… some say The Washington Post was the first to spill ink on the story composed of many false facts. The story thence reported globally was this one: Pfc. Jessica Lynch had been ambushed in Iraq along with her 11 comrades who all died at the scene; that she alone survived even though she’d been stabbed and shot; that she held off attackers with firepower but was captured; and later rescued from an enemy hospital in a daring raid by US soldiers, and that none of the other 11 soldiers were found…
… when in fact, Pfc. Jessica Lynch never fired her weapon (jammed with sand); was not stabbed or shot, but had broken bones from being thrown when her vehicle crashed; and during her ‘rescue’… no Iraqi solders were in the hospital; and even more thwarting to those who passed the false story, even though the story remained on the air waves, in print and on film for weeks without being retracted… the hospital staff continued to say they had already tried to arrange her transfer back to American forces before her ‘rescue.’ The bodies of the 11 soldiers were recovered by US forces.
As a military wife, married to an NCO who re-upped in the military for 21 years, 17 years of which were in public affairs… just like journalists in the national print and television media, there are also military story-gatherers who are legendary straight arrows, but there also seem to be a thin stream of those who are crooked as a Lippes Loop. It may not be by accident that the word ‘storyteller’ in most every language, means both the venerable art of gathering and detailing history, but is also used as a euphemism for a person who tells lies in order to blow smoke.
Pfc. Lynch’s real story in Iraq may have gone awry from the beginning. All it takes is one military officer or subordinate– either a first reporting eyewitness, or first writer, or first reader or transcriber—who got it wrong by accident at first, (easy to do in the heat of things everywhere, at every level of reporting from scenes of tragedy, but allowing the false story to go on and on, that is the issue), or who either embellishes their own ‘dangerous’ role in the ‘rescue,’ or who thought Pfc. Lynch’s story ought (in their minds) go something like this…
‘…Let’s make a hero out of her… think of it, a woman in a combat situation is a relatively new thing; Picture her, uniform shot away, muscles showing, half naked body, M-16 firing, holding off enemy Iraqis with her three last bullets while bleeding from stab and gunshot wounds. Wow! What a story!’
Yes, but only on the cover of a comic book.
It is completely unnecessary to make up stories about harm and bravery in war. There are plenty of real stories of harm and bravery in war, ones that are imperfect, and therefore all the more miraculous. Warriors aren’t one-dimensional Terminator action-figures crated in plastic.
From what I know re more than 40 years of listening closely to war stories from family members and patients who served in wars, I’d put it this way: those who go as soldiers to a war are not MGM actors, but our neighbors, schoolmates and family members who through training, and in some combination of love and fear and horrification and hope, get filled with the ‘Four S’s�
…soul and sweat and snot… and ‘stuff’ as we say, that ‘stuff’ being an inner and outer force that is greater than the person themselves… a sudden wise sense that erupts in moments that call for utter prescience, that offers a mysterious radar, that says, ‘Don’t think, just move in this direction… this way, not that way, over here, over here.’
To make up ‘a story that wasn’t,’ and circulate it worldwide, yes, this deprives Pfc. Lynch of her actual story of fear and fumbling and striving and bravery… We never get to hear her story without the fog of the false story.
We also don’t focus on what has been widely reported and appears to have been verified by her… that she was raped. That that may have been perpetrated on her at the ambush site, and compounded her injuries. One arm: shattered with multiple compound fractures piercing the fascia, muscles, nerves and skin with bone shards. Spine fractured in two places. Right foot crushed. Left leg broken into pieces, the broken mosaic of bones severed nerves leaving that leg without feeling.
Yet today, four years after the fatal ambush on 23 March 2003, you see a pretty and articulate woman who walks with a gait clearly belonging to a person once badly injured physically. Bodies heal as best they can, and often enough good almost as new. Emotional wounding takes longer.
But, as much, and even more so, to falsify this news story of Private First Class Lynch, also diminishes the stories of those who were ambushed with her that day, those whose stories and injuries and even names are completely lost in this entire story… that is, the eleven soldiers, our neighbors, classmates and family members who died.
Falsified stories like the one made up about Pfc. Lynch can hit other soldiers hard. Many have little and big sisters and mothers; they have sweethearts and other women and men and children they care for deeply … They are soldiers, they identify with protecting others. To falsely fill a soldier with encouragement to avenge something that never happened to Pfc. Lynch, to incite soldiers who are tired and far from home with desire to ‘make right’ something that was never wrong… that is even an egregious recklessness and manipulation.
Still, Pfc. Jessica Lynch should be put in for a medal. She could have ‘gone along.’ She could have been silent. She is her own witness with these words from the book of her travails: “My heroes are Lori (Pvt. Lori Piestewa, who was killed during the ambush on Lynch’s convoy), the soldiers that are over there, the soldiers that were in that car beside me, the ones that came and rescued me. I’m just a survivor.”
I’d suggest a new medal be struck…. maybe something like “Speak Truth to Liesâ€? medal, awarded to a person who, while serving in any capacity with the U.S. Army, is cited for gallantry in action against “an enemy of the United Statesâ€? …and that this must have been performed with marked distinction.
And who would “an enemy of the United Statesâ€? be? What if sometimes the US is its own worst enemy, aided and abetted by various and sundry? What if the enemy is those who refuse to be carefully accountable to the very soldiers they oversee? What if its someone like a former Secretary of Defense who is 75 years old and who doesn’t appear to have the maturity of a woman soldier who hadn’t even made Corporal yet at age 19…?
What if Pogo was right? Paraphrased, “We have met the enemy and he is ‘one of’ us.”
“Jessica Lynch Didn’t Follow The Script Written For Her: A Unique Form of Braveryâ€? from I Put the Culture on the Couch, © 2007, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved, is printed here under Creative Commons License by which author grants permission to copy, distribute and transmit this particular work under the conditions that the use be non-commercial, that the work be used in its entirety and not altered, added to, or subtracted from, and that it be attributed with author’s name and this full copyright notice. For other uses, contact copyright holder.
Comments to “Jessica Lynch Didn’t Follow Script Written For Her: A Unique Form of Bravery”
Dr. E:
All I can add to this wonderful post (and marvelous headline) is that Jessica Lynch took a familiar path to Iraq. She was from Nowheresville and making it would have been getting a job at the local WalMart. The Army was a viable alternative and she seized on it.
In this context, the wrongs of the Iraq war and what happened to her in the desert are incidental. Jessica became much the better person for having served in the military and I personally know of many such examples. Methinks she would have had the stuff to speak humbly and candidly regardless of whether she ever donned Army camos, but that experience brought out the best in her.
Dr E-I do think her courage should be commended – for her service in combat, her behavior during and after her ordeal, and for coming clean with the American public. Perpetuating lies only boomerangs back, giving the Pentagon a loss of credibility which results in an erosion of support for the military and their efforts to defend this country.
For me, her true story is important for us to hear- just because it is the truth and she’s earned the right to tell it. How sad that Jessica and the Tillmans had to live a lie because someone at the Pentagon thought it would make good propaganda. It demonstrates how little faith they have in Americans to deal with the truth.
BTW, Bill Moyer’s Journal takes an important look at how the press performed in the days preceding and during the beginning of the Iraq War on PBS at 9pm ET tonight. He looks at how after 9/11 a lot of the media was caught up with national patriotic fervor like the rest of us. Programs that dared to voice opposition to the war- like MSNBC’s Phil Donahue’s show were cancelled because they didn’t respond to the national mood.
i wonder how “heroic” she was feeling whilst accepting the million dollar book deal based on these myths she is so “heroically” blaming the media and exonerating the white house for…
From the humble viewpoint of an ordinary News viewer in the UK, Jessica Lynch was not a hero in the Middle East – she is now!
By Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb
THE WASHINGTON POST
April 3
“Several officials cautioned that the precise sequence of events is still being determined, and that further information will emerge as Lynch is debriefed. Reports thus far are based on battlefield intelligence, they say, which comes from monitored communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah whose reliability has yet to be assessed. Pentagon officials said they had heard “rumorsâ€? of Lynch’s heroics but had no confirmation. ”
So now, because the WaPo spoke to some unnamed “official” in the Pentagon, and blasted a front page story about something that was never confirmed, in fact was downplayed by the Pentagon, the military (and Rumsfeld) is being charged with lying about Lynch’s capture?………..
A new play called “Revisionist History” is now playing at Washington D.C.’s Political Grandstanding Theater just in time for elections. Call early for the best seating.
Casual-If its not a lie why doesn’t Rumsfeld come and give sworn testimony before the congressional committee? And the elections are 18 months away.
Dan and causual – You both sound like Cheetos eating chickenhawks.
What I found interesting is that the military delayed the rescue ONE DAY to getting the film crew ready for the rescue. If the young woman was being abused or threatened with rape why the delay for a photo op. The Lincoln Group is still over there writing for Pravda.
I watched some of the testimony last night on CSPAN. Lynch didn’t follow the script, even more damaging to the Rummy crowd was the Tillman family. The family has a history of fighting and serving our country and they were ANGRY at being used and lied to. Pat Tillmans service in itself was heroic, the Pentagon and Lincoln Group using his death for propaganda was criminal.
This is the UK Guardians take on the Lynch story.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,956255,00.html
But Rudi, Pat’s [fellow Ranger in a convoy merely hundreds of yards behind him when he died] brother is “an antiwar activist who has posted on far-left web sites”; the family is a bunch of atheists; and even worse, they were both against the war in Iraq! You obviously can’t trust these people who are doing all this for blatantly political purposes.
As DAN points out, it may well be true that Jessica has not been perfect. There are already a number of bloggers heaping scorn on her (themselves being saintly in every respect, of course).
Here is a very young woman caught up in traumatic events who is trying to tell the truth as she knows it. That is the only message here.
No one really knows the details of who did what behind the scenes.
To spin this in service of politics, right or left, throws mud on this rate moment of truth telling.
Why is Pfc. Nattalee Holoway a hero and not this group, who actually were wounded by enemy fire or killed.
Sgt. Donald Walters
Pfc. Patrick Miller
SPC Shoshana Johnson
SPC Lori Ann Piestewa
Seems a teen from Alabama missing from Carlos and Charlies is better press. A Hopi Indian or ethnic Panamanian woman soldier wouldn’t make a story that Hilary Swank could star in.
mikkel – When Wiccans die in the war their monument at military cemetaries can’t uses their symbol, Pat “Daddy get me out of Korea” Robertson doesn’t like those Pagans,
Domajat – Watch the hearings on Monday at CSPAN. The Pentagon spuns this like a top. The stories of the people I listed above are well documented. Walters is the “blond hero”, the Iraqis propaganda machine mentions Walters, what is unclear is how the translation was screwed up. Miller earned his Silver Star, Lynch’s Bronze Star makes for good Hollywood script. Where are the Swiftboat crowds complaints for phony medals in this story?
Rudi I think the Wiccan thing was just recently settled. (Recently as in two days ago).
Mikkel – Cernig at Newhoggs has a post about the issue. It wasn’t settled voluntarily, it took a court case I believe. If you aren’t a reader of Newshoggs I would recommend you check it out.
mikkel Says:
April 25th, 2007 at 9:09 am
But Rudi, Pat’s [fellow Ranger in a convoy merely hundreds of yards behind him when he died] brother is “an antiwar activist who has posted on far-left web sites�; the family is a bunch of atheists; and even worse, they were both against the war in Iraq! You obviously can’t trust these people who are doing all this for blatantly political purposes.
I am a Christian from the UK. The fact that Tillman’s family may be atheists is irrelevant to the discussion. Bush, Blair and Saddam are (or were in Saddam’s case) all theists but that doesn’t make any of them truthful as we all know. Bush and Blair and their supportes have lied repeatedly on many aspects of the so-called War on terrorism and have allowed thousands of innnocent Muslim civilians to suffer appallingly.
Pat Tillman’s bother is a brave man. He fought in Afganistan with the military and is now fighting the right wing extremists in the US government and media. He is the type of guy that gives me hope that not all Americans are as ignorant as we in Europe perceive them to be.
hello dear writers… thank you for your thoughtful comments. I’ve been working on a short piece on Ranger Pat Tillman for some days now. I am a slow writer due to my dyslexia (it looks like lexdyxia to me… ) but …soon, I hope. Thank you for caring about other human beings. Regardless of what tack anyone takes, I can see that in your posts
Just a comment about one of the comments above; the book contract was reported to be 1M, true, and in the same report it noted that half went to the writer, and half to Pfc. Lynch who told her story to the writer.
After the take of foreign and domestic agents, and Uncle Sugar’s tax cut re windfalls, I think that Pfc. Lynch’s share would have maybe just been under $200,000…that is, if some foreign countries where the book was published didn’t also take taxes out too.
My personal knowledge of the military is that veteran’s benefits for the disabled are often not only grotesquely delayed, the government budget side often argues hot with its own vets who have served, about whether they are worthy of continuing treatment or not. (Think mustard gas, think Kuwait oil fire, think agent orange… just to name a few)
If a soldier is not a CO, if his or her family has no ‘contacts…’ which is very often the case in the military… if the cameras have gone home and are no longer ‘watching’ what happens at VA hospitals here and overseas… a war veteran has to confront “the battle after the battle”, that is, they have to fight all over again just to receive the rights promised when he or she enlisted… especially those vets with painful lifelong conditions from war injuries… conditions that often deteriorate and devolve over time.
Pfc Lynch had her legs, arms and spine broken and shattered… over her lifetime there may indeed be additional deterioration of bone mass and limb function… The way I see it for now, is she has a chance at reconstructive surgery by a civie surgeon and one week in the hospital recovering… which could eat up 200k and much more.
She’s one of the fortunate few who has ‘resources’ by the luck of the draw. She can cut through military red tape and can help tend to her own health at least until the $ runs out… rather than having to wait possibly months and months and even years to get cleared through unbelievable amounts of military red tape in order to have what was promised when every civilian enlisted: more than minimalist health care…and for life.
Read about the cuts in GI benefits from 1950 onward and to date. I think one of the biggest questions for various military persons and thinkers, is yes, one about fair compensation, meaning, how can the USA government break its troth with its war vets who have given all of body, bones, blood and mind that they’ve got?
I told you that military lifers are corrupt bastards barely worth wiping your arse on. Now you know why.
THE TYPICAL hospital patient is given the wrong medication or the wrong dose at least once a day, according to the Institute of Medicine, a research organization that advises Congress. The good news is that these mistakes are less likely to happen at a hospital run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Surprised?
Recent news accounts about the shameful conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center — a hospital unaffiliated with the Department of Veterans Affairs — might lead you to believe that VA hospitals are a national embarrassment. That may have been true at one time. But VA hospitals have undergone a remarkable turnaround in the last decade and, on average, earn higher marks for patient safety and quality of care than most other hospitals in the United States.
For example, the VA system is well ahead of most hospitals in protecting patients from medication errors. The VA has adopted a system in which a nurse scans a barcode printed on the patient’s bracelet, indicating the name and dose of each medication the patient should be getting. The nurse then scans the pre-packaged medication to make sure it’s a match.
Read all about it at the LA Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mccaughey2apr02,0,3030928.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
Dr E. Thank you for the update on Ms. Lynch’s condition- I don’t think that she is going to be living in the lap of luxury. Not too many of us would happily endure the pain and suffering she has to every day, and deal with a disability so cheerfully. I wish her well, and am grateful for her service and her testimony to the committee. It must have been a relief to finally tell the truth.
The Pentagon’s lies have backfired on them after all- have they even apologized to the Tillmans for compounding their terrible loss with all of those lies?
Dear Nobody: I truly wish it were so that health care for vets was much better than that of the general population.
My personal experience at VA hospitals as many stand today: The god of white glove inspection might have sudden apoplexy. There might be a brand new computer on the desk but amidst dingy surroundings, pillars and other impossible to clean high ceilings with their carved heroic architecture, and often years of smoke, with under funded new projects using new equipment sometimes, but also ‘good enough’ equipment and in some cases, obsolete Government Issue equipment.
To me, the most miraculous thing is that many, many, esp the young docs and PAs and nurses are often enthusiastic, and try hard to help all they can.
Regardless, it still stands: Some patients receive care, some don’t. Some wait. And wait. Some die while they are waiting. Some die ..from.. having been made to wait.
Not the most rad hospital in the world is going to cure or help agent orange exposure with all its attendant debilitations if the Government refuses to recognize it as a deteriorative, life-thieving illness.
In the article link to the LA Times that you mentioned, I can see how hopeful that would be were it true. I am not certain, but there is a vagueness to the ’study’ cited in the article.. I think it reads to me that way because as far as I can tell, the ’study’ seems to be missing, amongst other markers, a precise control group(s) study with other hospitals at depth. I also see no longevity armature. It is hard to see this document as pure evidence-based science.
Likely unbeknownst to the reader. The “Institute of Medicine,” which is the sole source for the LA Times article, (you gave the link to, thank you) on how much better VA hospitals are than ‘regular’ hospitals… although not stated in the article, the “Institute of Medicine,â€? appears to be part of the “National Academy of Sciences,” which is an United States Government funded Institute for the most part, with some meager ‘matching grant’ monies in comparison, given by the Kellogg Company and a couple other corporate groups.
That the article says the ‘Institute of Medicine’ is consulted by the US Congress on matters of health et al, but without revealing the Institute of Medicine ..is.. the Government itself, well, it seems an odd way to present what is supposed to be seen as an independent authority.
Here is the intro to the bill which enacted the parent group for the Institute of Medicine:
“An Act to Incorporate the National Academy of Sciences
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled…” etc.
dear kritter: You asked “…have they even apologized to the Tillmans for compounding their terrible loss with all of those lies?…
I do not know if the people in charge have aplogized to Ranger Tillman’s family. It could be that many have apologized privately, for many many in the military are decent souls of conscience.
But, there is a litigation factor that the brass would also be watching carefully…
Annie – I don’t recall if your a regular here, but Mikkel and I were being a little satiric. I would venture to say we both support the Tillam family 110%. For someone to giveup a NFL carreer and join the military even though he “detests” the ChimpinChief is admirable. It’s a shame some of the young chickenhawks here and aboard don’t sign up to fight in a war they wet their pants over. I am a proud liberal…