One Thing About Jessica Lynch

[Plaid Adder]

I was going to try getting a column out of this, but then I figured she's been through enough already and anyhow there was only one point I wanted to make that other people aren't already hammering home:

The focus has been on all the stuff that the Pentagon wrote into the story that turned out not to be true. All well and good. Helps drive home the fact that these people are lying sacks who would betray their own mothers to further their own agendas. However.

The Lynch story is useful to them not only for what they could fabricate but for the nuggets of truth that it allowed them to re-present. Specifically, the Lynch story is the only way that the Pentagon has found of acknowledging some of the ugly realities of the Iraq war, including and especially the growing number of seriously wounded. The one thing that everyone can agree on about what happened to Private Lynch is that she was in agony. Her story, her co/ghostwritten book's story, and the made for TV story all focus on the severity of her injuries and the pain she endured and is still enduring. Even the sensationalization of the threat of amputation, which is apparently milked for all it's worth in the book, is a way of acknowledging the number of hands, arms, and limbs that have been shattered or blown clean off in this war. And then, having admitted that this war is putting the soldiers fighting it through all kinds of unholy physical suffering, the Jessica Lynch story tells everyone that it is really OK, because they all get to live happily ever after once the brave American soldiers blast their way in to rescue her. So of course none of the viewers at home need to worry about saving other people like Jessica Lynch by, say, stopping the war.

Not an earthshattering observation, but worth pointing out: in a way, the most damaging thing that the Jessica Lynch story does is tell the truth--in such a way as to prevent the viewers at home from being outraged and upset by it as they should be.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[sistersofmercy]

1. Totally agree with your observation, definitely sugar-coats the

reality of the atrocious combat injuries. I do have sympathy for Jessica Lynch though, I watched her interview and caught the scepticism underlying her thoughts, particularly in regard to the alleged rape, her quote, "If it did indeed happen." I wish her well.

[electricmonk]

2. That's why I thought it was good she

was making the talk show rounds. You read the stuff in the paper or someone on tv mentions wounded but it doesn't always sink in exactly what they mean. When I saw her on Letterman last week it was the first time that I saw her (don't watch much tv) and it was painful to watch her trying to walk and then telling about all the hardware holding her legs together.

[leetrisck]

3. Agree with the thought process, but don't you

wonder why someone hasn't mentioned the number of women killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. And no, I'm not saying the women killed are more important than the men, but neither is a woman POW more important than a male POW. Does anyone have the numbers on women killed in Iraq? I think it's at least 3 in Afghanistan