The Jessica Lynch Creation
 

I don't know if you guys heard...but the whole Jessica Lynch thing was staged. They asked the iraqi guards to hold her a few days longer to get heroic publicity when they saved her. And as it turned out, an Iraqi hospital had helped her and taken care of her already, they were going to give her back to the troops, but when the ambulance can they started firing upon it.......what do you think about this

Sincerely,
-a proud american

Who is Jessica Lynch?

Wasn't she a soldier who was rescued from being captured in the war in Iraq?

Wasn't she that bitch on the news a few weeks ago? The video or something looked like she was in a barn.

Oh now I get it. It's some kind of american overly-patriotic publicity stunt performed by the military. Now that you mention it I do remember something being said about that on the news...

isn't she the daughter of that wallstreet company with the bull for a mascott?

watched as little of the war on TV as possible. If I want to see war photage I will go to my local video store and rent something. the special effects and the acting are much better in both.

Yes, she was the POW taken hostage by the Iraqi guards. There was a lot of other hostages, but they were released a couple days before. And yes, we "rescued" her. She was actually a hostage, but we asked the Iraqi guards to keep her for a few days so we could "rescue" her. Get it yet?

OK. It sure cleared away any previous impressions I had about the US military. Bomb the country all to hell, send in some troops for the show-effect and then have the press praise them as heroes for fighting against oppression and liberating POWs.

are there any links to a news story about this staging?

Hit it right on the head, Branik.

Yeah, what about that? As plausable as it sounds, do you have any proof? And remember, 3000 pages of disjointed rantings on the Geo****ties homepage of a mentally unbalanced socialist is not considered "proof".

I don't know where the original poster got their news from, but there was a BBC programme on this subject shown last Sunday. Quite interesting, really. There's a digest of what it was all about here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...nt/3028585.stm

In case you can't be bothered reading it: no, it doesn't suggest that the Americans "asked the Iraqi guards to hold her a few days longer", but it does suggest the operation was staged for purely propaganda reasons. That much seems fairly obvious - why else take a camera team along? - but the report also suggests that Lynch didn't really need rescuing, since there was nobody but doctors to rescue her from.

The other, more interesting part of the programme, which rang more true than the Jessica Lynch part anyway, just talked about the extent to which propaganda played a part in the war coverage. From embedded journalists to the daily 'freedom briefings' (from which one reporter was ejected after asking "what's the point of us being here?" to much applause), they were intricately designed to promote the American side. I think Darth-Eggplant has the right idea - stay away from TV coverage at all costs!

TV can be as objective as the other media, but you have to be careful as to which channel you are looking at. During the "war", I was often surprised as to how different the contents of the news broadcasts were between different channels. For example CNN kept on ranting about US advancement all the time, while BBC and the finnish YLE kept a more objective view for the duration of the charade. They also informed people of the events from the Iraqi point of view.:)

seeing as this is now about media,

www.opendemocracy.com

that's an enormous forum with loads of high profile contributors. during the war they had lots of iraqi points of view. it's good with the internet the way it is, so anyone has a voice. sometimes this is bad but as long as you keep that pinch of salt handy, and don't mind too much pretentious bs then it's an ok site.

interesting, i wish id have watched that documentary on the matter, cant say the whole ting suprises me though, like you say why the hell take a camera along? did she really need rescuing?:(