Gość: !!!
IP: 195.152.54.*
18.06.03, 11:37
Wed 18 Jun 2003
The myth of Private Jessica
JACQUI GODDARD IN MIAMI
IT WAS one of America’s greatest tales of modern war heroism. Pentagon top
brass and even the United States president, George Bush, heaped plaudits on
Private Jessica Lynch, 20, following her barnstorming rescue from the enemy’s
clutches by a US special operations unit, making the petite blonde the Iraq
war’s most celebrated soldier.
But an exhaustive investigation by the Washington Post has now exposed the
myth behind the story of the female soldier’s capture, her injuries and the
stage-managed snatch to safety ten days later. The probe has resulted in the
most definitive version of the drama.
An episode that had looked set to be turned into a Hollywood drama was in
part nothing but "Hollywood crap", according to one witness.
The paper has established that Ms Lynch’s multiple injuries were caused not
by the bullets or bayonets of enemy soldiers - nor, apparently, by Iraqi
interrogation officers - but when the Humvee in which the lowly maintenance
clerk was travelling hit a US army truck, crushing her bones and knocking her
unconscious.
Four others were either killed or mortally injured in that crash. Among them
was mother-of-two Private Lori Piestewa, Ms Lynch’s best friend and room-
mate.
The new version of events has sown doubts over whether Ms Piestewa was killed
by the enemy, as had been claimed, or whether she died as a result of
injuries sustained in the Humvee collision.
Adnan Mushafafawi, who was a brigadier in the Iraqi army medical corps, a
member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and the director of the Nasiriyah
hospital, has told the Washington Post that a policeman brought in two female
US soldiers at around 10am on 23 March. They were Ms Lynch and Ms Piestewa.
"They were both unconscious," he recalled. "Miss Piestewa had bruises all
over her face. She was bleeding from the eyes, a severe head wound."
He said Ms Piestewa died soon after her arrival. Asked if either soldier had
stab or bullet wounds, he insisted "no, no". Pressed, he later said
that "maybe" Ms Piestewa had been shot, but he was unsure.
A further revelation is that Ms Lynch was certainly not "fighting to the
death", as had been claimed by US officials, when she was dragged off by
Saddam Hussein’s troops.
Her rifle, which she was purported to have emptied into enemy lines, never
fired a single round because it jammed. The Pentagon has launched an in-depth
inquiry of its own into the ambush outside the southern Iraqi town of
Nasiriyah that led to the capture of seven soldiers from the 507th
Maintenance Company, including Ms Lynch, and the death of 11 others.
But the circumstances leading to the ambush are highly embarrassing for the
US army. The Washington Post inquiry reveals that the soldiers involved had
been deprived of sleep for 60 hours.
Military investigators also believe the bloody ambush was partly down to the
fact that superiors never passed on word that the 3rd Infantry Division
column, whose lead the 507th was following, had been re-routed.
The unit thus "found itself in a desperate situation due to a navigational
error caused by the combined effects of the operational pace, acute fatigue,
isolation and the harsh environmental conditions" a Pentagon report said.
