"Little Girl Rambo" Jessica Lynch, Military & False Stories
"Little Girl Rambo" Jessica Lynch, Military & False Stories
With footage of US commandos carrying her from a Nasiriya hospital. The former US private Jessica Lynch today condemned what she said were Pentagon efforts to turn her into a "little girl Rambo", and accused military chiefs of using "elaborate tales" to try to make her into a hero of the Iraq war.
The former Army private whose story of fighting off the enemy while wounded during an ambush in 2003 was inaccurately portrayed by the military, also testified before the committee, which was charged with investigating "misleading information from the battlefield."
When she was rescued and returned home, she testified, she was referred to as the "little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia that went down fighting." She testified that she thought that if a false story "rallied a nation" perhaps there was some good accomplished. But she wanted to know why a lie was created when there were true heros.
Lynch's family confused the issue by telling the press that their daughter had not sustained any bullet wounds. Lynch's parents subsequently refused to talk to the press, explaining that they had been "told not to talk about it." (Weeks later, the truth emerged. Lynch was neither stabbed nor shot. She was apparently injured while falling from her vehicle.)
As soon as Lynch was in the air, (the Joint Operations Center) phoned Jim Wilkinson, the top civilian communications aide to CENTCOM Gen. Tommy Franks. The Director of Strategic Communications, the White House's top representative on the ground. Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers let the story stand during an April 3 press conference although both had been fully briefed on Lynch's true condition.
"The truth is not always easy to hear but the truth is always more heroic than the hype," Lynch said. When the story on the street supports the message, it will be left there by a non-answer. The message is more important than the truth.
The hearing is also looking at the case of the American football star-turned-solider Pat Tillman, who died in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2004. As with Tillerman, Central Command kept the story alive by not giving out details. Pat Tillman's relatives were not told of the true circumstances of his death until five weeks after his funeral. One witnesses at the Tillman hearings said, "The military misled the nation."
A Strategy of Lies, or The Politics of Truth?
When a government recklessly expands the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power, always claiming that its motives are pure and moral, it is violating its promise to the country.
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