Hardpan
2003-09-03 11:57:41 UTC
The truth about Jessica
Her Iraqi guards had long fled, she was being well cared for - and
doctors had already tried to free her. John Kampfner discovers the
real story behind a modern American war myth
Thursday May 15, 2003
The Guardian
Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war.
An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and
her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic
moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial
moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a
victory too slow in coming.
Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news
management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the
real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media
managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to
present its future wars.
But the American media tactics, culminating in the Lynch episode,
infuriated the British, who were supposed to be working alongside them
in Doha, Qatar. This Sunday, the BBC's Correspondent programme reveals
the inside story of the rescue that may not have been as heroic as
portrayed, and of divisions at the heart of the allies' media
operation.
"In reality we had two different styles of news media management,"
says Group Captain Al Lockwood, the British army spokesman at central
command. "I feel fortunate to have been part of the UK one."
In the early hours of April 2, correspondents in Doha were summoned
from their beds to Centcom, the military and media nerve centre for
the war. Jim Wilkinson, the White House's top figure there, had stayed
up all night. "We had a situation where there was a lot of hot news,"
he recalls. "The president had been briefed, as had the secretary of
defence."
The journalists rushed in, thinking Saddam had been captured. The
story they were told instead has entered American folklore. Private
Lynch, a 19-year-old clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was a member
of the US Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company that took a wrong
turning near Nassiriya and was ambushed. Nine of her US comrades were
killed. Iraqi soldiers took Lynch to the local hospital, which was
swarming with fedayeen, where he was held for eight days. That much is
uncontested.
Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed
that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped
about on her hospital bed and interrogated. It was only thanks to a
courageous Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, that she was saved.
According to the Pentagon, Al-Rehaief risked his life to alert the
Americans that Lynch was being held.
Just after midnight, Army Rangers and Navy Seals stormed the Nassiriya
hospital. Their "daring" assault on enemy territory was captured by
the military's night-vision camera. They were said to have come under
fire, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter.
That was the message beamed back to viewers within hours of the
rescue.
Al-Rehaief was granted asylum barely two weeks after arriving in the
US. He is now the toast of Washington, with a fat $500,000 (£309,000)
book deal. Rescue in Nassiriya will be published in October. As for
Lynch, her status as cult hero is stronger than ever. Internet auction
sites have listed at least 10 Jessica Lynch items, ranging from an oil
painting with an opening bid of $200 to a $5 "America Loves Jessica
Lynch" fridge magnet. Trouble is that doctors now say she has no
recollection of the whole episode and probably never will. Her memory
loss means that "researchers" have been called in to fill in the gaps.
One story, two versions. The doctors in Nassiriya say they provided
the best treatment they could for Lynch in the midst of war. She was
assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital, and one of only two
nurses on the floor. "I was like a mother to her and she was like a
daughter,"says Khalida Shinah.
"We gave her three bottles of blood, two of them from the medical
staff because there was no blood at this time,"said Dr Harith
al-Houssona, who looked after her throughout her ordeal. "I examined
her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated
ankle. Then I did another examination. There was no [sign of]
shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only RTA, road
traffic accident," he recalled. "They want to distort the picture. I
don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a
bullet injury."
The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on
the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a
local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the
town. He said the team's Arabic interpreter asked him where the
hospital was. "He asked: 'Are there any Fedayeen over there?' and I
said, 'No'." All the same, the next day "America's finest warriors"
descended on the building.
"We heard the noise of helicopters," says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that
they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised.
Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the
hospital.
"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and
blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie
like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting,
breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The
Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was
handcuffed to a bed frame.
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived,
Al-Houssona had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an
ambulance. "I told her I will try and help you escape to the American
Army but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life."
He put her in an ambulance and instructed the driver to go to the
American checkpoint. When he was approaching it, the Americans opened
fire. They fled just in time back to the hospital. The Americans had
almost killed their prize catch.
A military cameraman had shot footage of the rescue. It was a race
against time for the video to be edited. The video presentation was
ready a few hours after the first brief announcement. When it was
shown, General Vincent Brooks, the US spokesman in Doha, declared:
"Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen,
loyal to a creed that they know that they'll never leave a fallen
comrade."
None of the details that the doctors provided Correspondent with made
it to the video or to any subsequent explanations or clarifications by
US authorities. I asked the Pentagon spokesman in Washington, Bryan
Whitman, to release the full tape of the rescue, rather than its
edited version, to clear up any discrepancies. He declined. Whitman
would not talk about what kind of Iraqi resistance the American forces
faced. Nor would he comment on the injuries Lynch actually sustained.
"I understand there is some conflicting information out there and in
due time the full story will be told, I'm sure," he told me.
That American approach - to skim over the details - focusing instead
on the broad message, led to tension behind the scenes with the
British. Downing Street's man in Doha, Simon Wren, was furious that on
the first few days of the war the Americans refused to give any
information at Centcom. The British were put in the difficult position
of having to fill in the gaps, off the record.
Towards the end of the conflict, Wren wrote a confidential five-page
letter to Alastair Campbell complaining that the American briefers
weren't up to the job. He described the Lynch presentation as
embarrassing.
Wren yesterday described the Lynch incident as "hugely overblown" and
symptomatic of a bigger problem. "The Americans never got out there
and explained what was going on in the war," he said. "All they needed
to be was open and honest. They were too vague, too scared of engaging
with the media." He said US journalists "did not put them under
pressure".
Wren, who had been seconded to the Ministry of Defence, said he tried
on several occasions to persuade Wilkinson and Brooks to change tack.
In London, Campbell did the same with the White House, to no avail.
"The American media didn't put them under pressure so they were
allowed to get away with it," Wren said. "They didn't feel they needed
to change."
He acknowledged that the events surrounding the Lynch "rescue" had
become a matter of "conjecture". But he added: "Either way, it was not
the main news of the day. This was just one soldier, this was an
add-on: human interest stuff. It completely overshadowed other events,
things that were actually going on on the battlefield. It overshadowed
the fact that the Americans found the bodies of her colleagues. What
we wanted to give out was real-time news."
Lockwood told Correspondent:"Having lost the first skirmish, they (the
Americans) had pretty much lost the war when it came to media support.
Albeit things had got better and everything came to a conclusion quite
rapidly, but to my feelings they lost their initial part of the
campaign and never got on the front foot again," Lockwood said. "The
media adviser we had here [Wren] was an expert in his field. His
counterpart on the US side [Wilkinson] was evasive and was not around
as much as he should have been when it came to talking to the media."
The American strategy was to concentrate on the visuals and to get a
broad message out. Details - where helpful - followed behind. The key
was to ensure the right television footage. The embedded reporters
could do some of that. On other missions, the military used their own
cameras, editing the film themselves and presenting it to broadcasters
as ready-to-go pack ages. The Pentagon had been influenced by
Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably Black
Hawk Down.
Back in 2001, the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer, had
visited the Pentagon to pitch an idea. Bruckheimer and fellow producer
Bertram van Munster, who masterminded the reality show Cops, suggested
Profiles from the Front Line, a primetime television series following
US forces in Afghanistan. They were after human stories told through
the eyes of the soldiers. Van Munster's aim was to get close and
personal. He said: "You can only get accepted by these people through
chemistry. You have to have a bond with somebody. Only then will they
let you in. What these guys are doing out there, these men and women,
is just extraordinary. If you're a cheerleader of our point of view -
that we deserve peace and that we deal with human dignity - then these
guys are really going out on a limb and risking their own lives."
It was perfect reality TV, made with the active cooperation of Donald
Rumsfeld and aired just before the Iraqi war. The Pentagon liked what
it saw. "What Profiles does is given another in depth look at what
forces are doing from the ground," says Whitman. "It provides a very
human look at challenges that are presented when you are dealing in
these very difficult situations." That approached was taken on and
developed on the field of battle in Iraq.
The Pentagon has none of the British misgivings about its media
operation. It is convinced that what worked with Jessica Lynch and
with other episodes of this war will work even better in the future.
Her Iraqi guards had long fled, she was being well cared for - and
doctors had already tried to free her. John Kampfner discovers the
real story behind a modern American war myth
Thursday May 15, 2003
The Guardian
Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war.
An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and
her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic
moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial
moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a
victory too slow in coming.
Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news
management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the
real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon's media
managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to
present its future wars.
But the American media tactics, culminating in the Lynch episode,
infuriated the British, who were supposed to be working alongside them
in Doha, Qatar. This Sunday, the BBC's Correspondent programme reveals
the inside story of the rescue that may not have been as heroic as
portrayed, and of divisions at the heart of the allies' media
operation.
"In reality we had two different styles of news media management,"
says Group Captain Al Lockwood, the British army spokesman at central
command. "I feel fortunate to have been part of the UK one."
In the early hours of April 2, correspondents in Doha were summoned
from their beds to Centcom, the military and media nerve centre for
the war. Jim Wilkinson, the White House's top figure there, had stayed
up all night. "We had a situation where there was a lot of hot news,"
he recalls. "The president had been briefed, as had the secretary of
defence."
The journalists rushed in, thinking Saddam had been captured. The
story they were told instead has entered American folklore. Private
Lynch, a 19-year-old clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was a member
of the US Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company that took a wrong
turning near Nassiriya and was ambushed. Nine of her US comrades were
killed. Iraqi soldiers took Lynch to the local hospital, which was
swarming with fedayeen, where he was held for eight days. That much is
uncontested.
Releasing its five-minute film to the networks, the Pentagon claimed
that Lynch had stab and bullet wounds, and that she had been slapped
about on her hospital bed and interrogated. It was only thanks to a
courageous Iraqi lawyer, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, that she was saved.
According to the Pentagon, Al-Rehaief risked his life to alert the
Americans that Lynch was being held.
Just after midnight, Army Rangers and Navy Seals stormed the Nassiriya
hospital. Their "daring" assault on enemy territory was captured by
the military's night-vision camera. They were said to have come under
fire, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter.
That was the message beamed back to viewers within hours of the
rescue.
Al-Rehaief was granted asylum barely two weeks after arriving in the
US. He is now the toast of Washington, with a fat $500,000 (£309,000)
book deal. Rescue in Nassiriya will be published in October. As for
Lynch, her status as cult hero is stronger than ever. Internet auction
sites have listed at least 10 Jessica Lynch items, ranging from an oil
painting with an opening bid of $200 to a $5 "America Loves Jessica
Lynch" fridge magnet. Trouble is that doctors now say she has no
recollection of the whole episode and probably never will. Her memory
loss means that "researchers" have been called in to fill in the gaps.
One story, two versions. The doctors in Nassiriya say they provided
the best treatment they could for Lynch in the midst of war. She was
assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital, and one of only two
nurses on the floor. "I was like a mother to her and she was like a
daughter,"says Khalida Shinah.
"We gave her three bottles of blood, two of them from the medical
staff because there was no blood at this time,"said Dr Harith
al-Houssona, who looked after her throughout her ordeal. "I examined
her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated
ankle. Then I did another examination. There was no [sign of]
shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only RTA, road
traffic accident," he recalled. "They want to distort the picture. I
don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a
bullet injury."
The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on
the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a
local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the
town. He said the team's Arabic interpreter asked him where the
hospital was. "He asked: 'Are there any Fedayeen over there?' and I
said, 'No'." All the same, the next day "America's finest warriors"
descended on the building.
"We heard the noise of helicopters," says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that
they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised.
Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the
hospital.
"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and
blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie
like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting,
breaking down doors." All the time with the camera rolling. The
Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was
handcuffed to a bed frame.
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived,
Al-Houssona had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an
ambulance. "I told her I will try and help you escape to the American
Army but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life."
He put her in an ambulance and instructed the driver to go to the
American checkpoint. When he was approaching it, the Americans opened
fire. They fled just in time back to the hospital. The Americans had
almost killed their prize catch.
A military cameraman had shot footage of the rescue. It was a race
against time for the video to be edited. The video presentation was
ready a few hours after the first brief announcement. When it was
shown, General Vincent Brooks, the US spokesman in Doha, declared:
"Some brave souls put their lives on the line to make this happen,
loyal to a creed that they know that they'll never leave a fallen
comrade."
None of the details that the doctors provided Correspondent with made
it to the video or to any subsequent explanations or clarifications by
US authorities. I asked the Pentagon spokesman in Washington, Bryan
Whitman, to release the full tape of the rescue, rather than its
edited version, to clear up any discrepancies. He declined. Whitman
would not talk about what kind of Iraqi resistance the American forces
faced. Nor would he comment on the injuries Lynch actually sustained.
"I understand there is some conflicting information out there and in
due time the full story will be told, I'm sure," he told me.
That American approach - to skim over the details - focusing instead
on the broad message, led to tension behind the scenes with the
British. Downing Street's man in Doha, Simon Wren, was furious that on
the first few days of the war the Americans refused to give any
information at Centcom. The British were put in the difficult position
of having to fill in the gaps, off the record.
Towards the end of the conflict, Wren wrote a confidential five-page
letter to Alastair Campbell complaining that the American briefers
weren't up to the job. He described the Lynch presentation as
embarrassing.
Wren yesterday described the Lynch incident as "hugely overblown" and
symptomatic of a bigger problem. "The Americans never got out there
and explained what was going on in the war," he said. "All they needed
to be was open and honest. They were too vague, too scared of engaging
with the media." He said US journalists "did not put them under
pressure".
Wren, who had been seconded to the Ministry of Defence, said he tried
on several occasions to persuade Wilkinson and Brooks to change tack.
In London, Campbell did the same with the White House, to no avail.
"The American media didn't put them under pressure so they were
allowed to get away with it," Wren said. "They didn't feel they needed
to change."
He acknowledged that the events surrounding the Lynch "rescue" had
become a matter of "conjecture". But he added: "Either way, it was not
the main news of the day. This was just one soldier, this was an
add-on: human interest stuff. It completely overshadowed other events,
things that were actually going on on the battlefield. It overshadowed
the fact that the Americans found the bodies of her colleagues. What
we wanted to give out was real-time news."
Lockwood told Correspondent:"Having lost the first skirmish, they (the
Americans) had pretty much lost the war when it came to media support.
Albeit things had got better and everything came to a conclusion quite
rapidly, but to my feelings they lost their initial part of the
campaign and never got on the front foot again," Lockwood said. "The
media adviser we had here [Wren] was an expert in his field. His
counterpart on the US side [Wilkinson] was evasive and was not around
as much as he should have been when it came to talking to the media."
The American strategy was to concentrate on the visuals and to get a
broad message out. Details - where helpful - followed behind. The key
was to ensure the right television footage. The embedded reporters
could do some of that. On other missions, the military used their own
cameras, editing the film themselves and presenting it to broadcasters
as ready-to-go pack ages. The Pentagon had been influenced by
Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably Black
Hawk Down.
Back in 2001, the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer, had
visited the Pentagon to pitch an idea. Bruckheimer and fellow producer
Bertram van Munster, who masterminded the reality show Cops, suggested
Profiles from the Front Line, a primetime television series following
US forces in Afghanistan. They were after human stories told through
the eyes of the soldiers. Van Munster's aim was to get close and
personal. He said: "You can only get accepted by these people through
chemistry. You have to have a bond with somebody. Only then will they
let you in. What these guys are doing out there, these men and women,
is just extraordinary. If you're a cheerleader of our point of view -
that we deserve peace and that we deal with human dignity - then these
guys are really going out on a limb and risking their own lives."
It was perfect reality TV, made with the active cooperation of Donald
Rumsfeld and aired just before the Iraqi war. The Pentagon liked what
it saw. "What Profiles does is given another in depth look at what
forces are doing from the ground," says Whitman. "It provides a very
human look at challenges that are presented when you are dealing in
these very difficult situations." That approached was taken on and
developed on the field of battle in Iraq.
The Pentagon has none of the British misgivings about its media
operation. It is convinced that what worked with Jessica Lynch and
with other episodes of this war will work even better in the future.