Saving Private Lynch - Fact and Fiction

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/19/sprj.irq.bbc.lynch.dod/index.html


Responding to a BBC report that called the Pentagon accounts of the rescue "one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "I think that allegation is ridiculous, I don't know how else to respond. The idea that we would put a number of forces in danger unnecessarily to recover one of our POWs is just ridiculous."

....



The BBC report quoted witnesses and hospital officials as stating the United States knew that there were no Iraqi forces at the hospital when it conducted the commando raid, and that the United States special operations forces had used Hollywood theatrics, including blank ammunition, to make on a show of rescuing private Lynch.

The Pentagon said no blanks were used, and all procedures employed were consistent with the "tactics, techniques and procedures" normally employed by U.S. forces when there is a perceived threat of encountering hostile forces.

....


The Pentagon spokesman also said the United States military never claimed the rescue force came under fire when it burst into the hospital, but it did say U.S. troops supporting the mission exchanged fire nearby.

"There was not a firefight inside of the building, I will tell you, but there were firefights outside of the building, getting in and getting out," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations, said at an briefing in Doha, Qatar, on April 2.

...




Lynch suffered a head laceration and spinal injury, and both her legs and her right arm and foot were broken during her ordeal in Iraq.

...

Although Whitman acknowledged that in retrospect it might have been possible for the U.S. military to drive up to the hospital and take Lynch, he noted that that was not known at the time.
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Leif Roar said:
But wether or not the US Forces used blanks isn't a substantial fact of the article, and since the witness in question wasn't in any way portrayed as an expert witness I don't see that it's bad journalism of BBC to let his comment stand as it is.
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The entire article is about how the US 'put on a show' for PR purposes. Of course whether the statement about blanks is true is substantial. If US soldiers went into a warzone with no actual bullets in their guns, then the guys who ordered it care more about putting on a good show than keeping their men safe.

MattJ
 
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/19/cnna.kampener.lynch/index.html

What I'm very interested in is a couple of things that were in your report. You got a quote here from some of the doctors that were there at the hospital. I'm going to read the transcript of it. "It says like a film in Hollywood, they cried go, go, go. They shot with guns, and blanks with bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions, and break the door. We were very scared." Are you saying that you believe [the] Iraqi doctor's assessment that the U.S. troops there were using blanks?

KAMPFNER: Well, that is his contention. What we did, what I did when I went to the Pentagon and spoke to its No. 2 there, Brian Whitman, we said, OK, we have one story, two different versions. Let's cross-check the information that the Iraqi doctors have given against the official U.S. version.


Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued in a commando raid.
For example, what kind of injuries did Lynch sustain in the hospital? Was it true that she received bullet and stab wounds as a result of the Iraqis? He said, well, the truth will come out at some point in the future. In other words, he didn't engage in that.

Second question was, did the Americans come under fire from the Iraqis during the rescue mission? Again, that's the kind of holding answer we got from him.

The main point we said to them was, OK, there are two versions. There are several different allegations, several different interpretations of this story.

Instead of all of us relying on your five-minute, very professional, very carefully edited film, which was immediately transmitted from Central Command to the world's broadcasters, why don't you give everybody what's known in the profession as "the rushes"? Give everybody all the unedited film, the real-time film, as shot by the U.S. military cameraman who was with the rescue mission, and that will put everybody out of all questions of doubt. They declined to do that.

.....


KAMPFNER: Well, I mean, it must be said the British are no more angels than the Americans when it comes to putting out certain messages in the war. The British were worried about the Lynch episode, but they saw this more in general terms. They were worried about the entire U.S. media operation.

The man behind the scene sent a long a letter to Blair's head of strategy, Alex Campbell, setting out in quite considerable detail his misgivings about the way the Americans conducted the whole media operation from Doha.

At the same time, in our film, the British military spokesman, who figured very much in BBC, CNN and all international broadcasters' coverage of the war, told us on camera that he was deeply unhappy with the American media handling, and he said to us, there were two different styles of media management. There was the American one and the British one, and I was pleased to be part of the British one.

And that to me, that's a pretty damning indictment.
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I think it could be just as much a language issue, blank, bang?
 
aerocontrols said:


The entire article is about how the US 'put on a show' for PR purposes. Of course whether the statement about blanks is true is substantial. If US soldiers went into a warzone with no actual bullets in their guns, then the guys who ordered it care more about putting on a good show than keeping their men safe.

MattJ
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Oh, I don't believe for a second that US troops actually did use blanks during the operation - abandoned by the enemy or not, the hospital was not under US control at the time, and only a complete fool would treat it as a safe area.

That said, I don't think that the BBC article "stands or falls" based on the claim about blanks. The statement is made more or less in passing by a non-expert witness (and from the way it's presented it's not evident that the eye-witness really put it forward as a claim): it is clearly presented as the description by this witness, and not as a fact of the situation. If the witness was wrong on this point, it doesn't invalidate the rest of his statement, nor the parts of the article beyond his statement. So I don't think it's correct to consider this a substantial issue of the article.
 
Leif Roar said:
That said, I don't think that the BBC article "stands or falls" based on the claim about blanks. The statement is made more or less in passing by a non-expert witness (and from the way it's presented it's not evident that the eye-witness really put it forward as a claim): it is clearly presented as the description by this witness, and not as a fact of the situation. If the witness was wrong on this point, it doesn't invalidate the rest of his statement, nor the parts of the article beyond his statement. So I don't think it's correct to consider this a substantial issue of the article.
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I disagree. It was placed in the article, which reflects on the fact-checking and general use of logic on the part of the author. Many parts of the article are based on witness testimony. The ambulance being fired at, no bad treatment of PFC Lynch, etc... There is nothing to back these claims up. For the most part, I tend to believe the witnesses' statements, but you can't just write off a problem. It doesn't invalidate the other statements, but it certainly should trigger a bit of skepticism.

When it comes down to it, there's not a lot of solid detail on any version of this story. But I think what the "blanks" issue reflects poorly on most is the writer, and not the testimony of the witnesses.
 
The whole idea that delta force commandos would use blanks in a raid like this is so wildly absurd, that any media outfit that would broadcast or publish such a joke loses much of its credibility on the subject by doing so. As for the rest of the claims in the story, NO ONE KNOWS!

The US government doesn't even acknowledge the existence of Delta Force, let alone will it be giving any detailed accounts and analysis of it's recent missions!!!

Lol, like I said, many Brits are acting prissy for some unknown reason lately. I was sitting in a sandwich shop here in Spain yesterday and I heard some blonde British girl talking about how "the US gave Saddam all his weapons of mass destruction in the first place." Nevermind that that is a complete lie.
 
The US government doesn't even acknowledge the existence of Delta Force, let alone will it be giving any detailed accounts and analysis of it's recent missions!!!
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But they were quite happy to film the rescue and then show a heavily editted version of it to the world....

As for reporting the blanks quote. It would have been dishonest not to include the statement.

In any case, is it any more likely that special forces would send a civilian back in to a war zone to scout the area and gather intelligence for them as the lawyer claims?
 
I've been looking for a place to stick this in........

An Irishman's Diary
Kevin Myers



Two stories, featuring two Irish names. One is of a girl called Jessica Lynch from West Virginia.

She joins the US army, is sent to Iraq in a support unit, which is ambushed. She is injured when the vehicle in which she is travelling crashes; some of her colleagues are killed. She doesn't fire a shot. She is taken to a hospital by her captors, with extensive but non-life-threatening injuries.

She is cared for well in the hospital. Her Iraqi doctor likes her and protects her, though she is in no danger from Iraqi soldiers, who anyway have withdrawn from the hospital grounds. A lawyer working in the hospital goes to US troops not far away and reports the presence of Pte Lynch in the hospital. That night, US Special Forces arrive with cameras and record the unopposed removal of Pte Lynch, who initially hides under the bedclothes when the US soldiers arrive. Her only words are a tearful "I wanna go home". She gets her wish. She goes home. And that's the Lynch story.

Here's the other story. There's a talented, working-class, chess-playing youngster in Dublin called Ian Malone. In his teenage years he joins the FCA, but he never settles to any ordinary job. He tries to join the Defence Forces, but is told that at 21 he is too old. There are two other military options. One is to join the French Foreign Legion, the other the Irish Guards in the British army.

............(edited for brevity)


Soon after, another non-Briton joins the regiment. He is a Catholic Matabele from Zimbabwe. Maybe he joined the Irish Guards because he had met Irish missionaries. He is obsessed with Irish war-pipes and rapidly becomes the best piper in the regiment. His ambition is to lead the Irish Guards down the Mall before the queen.

He and Guardsman Malone become friends, and the Irishman takes up the pipes. Just as he is a born soldier, he is a natural piper as well. Their regiment is operationally busy and the two of them do much soldiering before they are sent to Iraq.

At about the same time as Pte Lynch is heading into the desert and captivity, the two Irish Guardsmen are practising Irish traditional tunes on their chanters, playing them backwards and forwards. It's more than musical diligence. They are steadying their nerves before going into action.

Their Warrior armoured fighting vehicle enters the heart of Basra. The doors open; and as the soldiers prepare to exit, a fedayeen fighter who has been pretending to be dead rises and fires into the back, hitting six Irish Guardsmen, instantly killing Guardsman Malone and his Zimbabwean friend.

Guardsman Malone is given a huge funeral in his native city. British soldiers in uniform are to be seen on the streets of Dublin for the first time in 81 years. The people of Ballyfermot turn out in their thousands to say goodbye to the local boy. A piper from the Irish Defence Forces joins a piper from the Irish Guards to perform at the funeral of their fellow-piper.

His funeral is marked by emotion, dignity and pride.


......................



The Catholic chaplain of the Brigade of Guards discusses the tortuous relationship between Britain and Ireland, with its good moments and its bad moments. And tragic though this occasion is, the coming together of so many people of different traditions at Guardsman Malone's funeral is, he says, unquestionably a good moment. He ends his sermon with the Irish Guards' motto: Quis Separabit. He is given an instant ovation.

Guardsman Malone thus goes to his grave an honoured man. But in Zimbabwe, the home of his dead piper friend is raided by the police; and his grieving mother's sister is gang-raped by them as punishment for the boy serving in an "imperialist" army.

There you have the two stories. One is a simple account of Jessica Lynch being hurt in an ambush, being well treated by her captors and then being rescued unopposed.

The other us a touching narrative of two young men, one black, one white, from different countries, who join a foreign army, who learn to play the Irish war-pipes, who practise Irish traditional music together, and who soldier together and who are killed in action together. Their deaths provide different parables. One is of ecumenism and harmony, with soldiers of two nations coming together to mourn a young man each has some claim on: and the other is of evil triumphant.

A multi-million dollar film is being made about one of these stories. Which one?


http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2003/0508/2129084286DIMAY8.html
 
"Go! Go! Go!" Is something that might very well be yelled on an actual SF raid to rescue a POW in enemy territory. "Stop!" might also be yelled, among many other things. Lots of yelling on such raids after the kick-off.

Not only will blanks not cycle the action without the adapter, but even with it they foul the weapon up good, thus increasing the possibility of malfunctions when you load the real bullets.

I would not fire a lot of blanks in a weapon that I might actually have to use in combat soon.
 
fsol said:


But they were quite happy to film the rescue and then show a heavily editted version of it to the world....

As for reporting the blanks quote. It would have been dishonest not to include the statement.
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Did you see any faces, unit patches, or tactics in that video? As for "It would have been dishonest not to include the statement."... HAHHA!! That's like saying that some guy tells a reporter that he witnessed a car wreck, buts adds in the middle of story that aliens lasers were also involved. Do you still run the story? HAHAHA. Lol, give me a break.

Did the army ever say there was resistance? If they did say so, then there probably was.
 
Well lets see, which part of the statement has caused the most discussion here? Oh yes, the bit about blanks being used. Now would you say that the statement has helped the journalist convince you of the accuracy of the witnesses statement, or has it made you question it? I would guess that it is the latter. If it had been left out the story could seem more convincing.
It is dishonest to pick and choose from the evidence to give you a result that you would like. If the journalist had decided to leave out the more dubious parts of the statement whilst including those parts which seemed more plausible that would therefore have been dishonest.

So I take it that sending unarmed civilians into warzones to gather intelligence is part of those secret special forces tactics then?
 
fsol said:
In any case, is it any more likely that special forces would send a civilian back in to a war zone to scout the area and gather intelligence for them as the lawyer claims?
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So I take it that sending unarmed civilians into warzones to gather intelligence is part of those secret special forces tactics then?
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Fsol, you do realize that Iraq itself was a warzone right? And that the location the civilian went to was just as much as warzone as the one he left? Do you also realize that the lawyer's family was probably still in that warzone, and that he probably had no desire to abandon them? That he in fact probably went back of his own free will? That this point you keep trying to make doesn't actually make any sense?
 
fsol said:
So I take it that sending unarmed civilians into warzones to gather intelligence is part of those secret special forces tactics then?
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During WW II, unarmed civilians were used extensively for intelligence gathereing, and for various support tasks for the resistance such asserving as couriers, giving supplies and shelter or working as border pilots. Some present day special forces are trained for working with local resistance elements and the local population, both for intelligence gathering and partisan activity.

I have no idea if the lawyer's version of events is the truth or even likely, but the idea of the military using civilians to gather intelligence is not unreasonable in itself.
 
I asked a question which wasn't answered so I asked it again. Now it has been answered I don't have to ask it again. Is asking a question making a point?

One way to answer it would have been "Yes it is likely, they have done this in the past. Here are some examples" A bit like Lief did.

Anyway, thanks for the answers.
 
fsol said:
If the journalist had decided to leave out the more dubious parts of the statement whilst including those parts which seemed more plausible that would therefore have been dishonest.
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Perhaps you are familiar with this journalist construct:

Party A says: "party A's statement here"

but Party B disputes that claim saying "party B's statement here"

As I said, three times now now:

This is BBC 'journalism'? Perhaps they should ask the US representatives for a response
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and later

US military infantry weapons don't fire blanks without adapters, as the BBC would have learned had they felt inclined to ask any representative of the US military while writing this story.

They apparently didn't. Great journalism.
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and yet later

This is a checkable fact.

They didn't check.

I thought journalists were supposed to verify the claims of witnesses.
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I don't suggest the reporter 'leave out' portions of quotes. However, which are you suggesting: That the reporter knew that the 'blanks' reference was false, and left in his story without correction or clarification, or that the reporter believed it, and left it in because he didn't bother to check his witness's claims with any US representative. Are you suggesting some other possibility?

It seems to me that the second option above is most likely what happened. Is that good journalism?

Here's another take worth reading.

Worse than Kampfner's uncritical acceptance of the Iraqi version of events (which reminds me of another British journalist, was his flagrant misrepresentation of what the military briefers have said about the case. From the Guardian story on Kampfner's documentary:

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.
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Absolutely false. The pentagon was not the source of the inaccurate information -- if it even was inaccurate, as we still do not know -- about Lynch's wounds. From BGEN Brooks' April 2 briefing on the rescue:

GEN. BROOKS: I don't want to comment too specifically on her condition. The good news is she's alive. She's in coalition control and receiving appropriate medical attention and care and screening right now. And for her privacy, I won't go any further into that.
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In fact, Kampfner is now trying to blame the Pentagon for speculations made by other reporters on the exact nature of Lynch's injuries. The truth is that it is against the law -- the Privacy Act, to be precise -- for military spokespeople to release information about personal injuries. Kampfner admits that DoD public affairs deputy Bryan Whitman would not "engage" these specifics, but still refers to the allegation that she had been shot and stabbed as "the official U.S. version." That is a lie.

On the issue of how much resistance the rescue team encountered:

They were said to have come under fire from inside and outside the building, but they made it to Lynch and whisked her away by helicopter.
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Once again, from Brooks' briefing:

We were successful in that operation last night and did retrieve PFC Jessica Lynch, bringing her away from that location of danger, clearing the building of some of the military activity that was in there. There was not a fire fight inside of the building, I will tell you, but there were fire fights outside of the building, getting in and getting out.
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So, what we have here is a violently incompetent reporter trying to blame the Pentagon Spin Machine for his own inability to discern facts from baseless speculations made by his collegues. And even worse, he has tried to use his own ignorance as a battering ram to pressure DoD to release information that would either be illegal (Lynch's injuries) or operationally stupid (the entire, unedited combat camera footage of the rescue operation).
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Just in case it's not clear, the above portion in quotes is Bill Herberts.

MattJ
 
Good job Matt. You smacked that down pretty nicely.

If CENTCOM says "there were fire fights outside of the building, getting in and getting out," then I bet there were.
 
Did you read AUPs post where he included this link?

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/19/cnna.kampener.lynch/index.html

The Guardian and BBC articles were based on the television program. In the television program Bryan Whitmans interview was shown. He basically says, it will probably all be addressed in the future. He doesn't even try to refute the claims. it seems to me the journalist did try and seek the opposing opinion but none was forthcoming. That is made clear in the program.

So where did these mysterious claims of stab and bullet wounds come from then? I wonder if they came from the same place that said Umm Quasar had fallen yesterday, today, tomorrow and the next day, or that there had been WMDs found in Iraq?. You know it might not have been the "official" pentagon line but somehow the information was passed on to the worlds press. Probably in the same way that you get stories based on quotes from "a source close to (insert MP of your choice)" would be my bet.
 
I think it should be noted that blanks can be fired without the use of an adapter (at least on the M-16). In my training we did not have enough adapters for our platoon, and fire team leaders were required to pull back the charging handle after each round to eject the spent casing and chamber a new round.
 
Retired Col. Hunt was on O'Reilly the other night. Apparently, an LA times reporter reported the BBC hoax as true. Col. HUnt interviewed people who were actually in the raid and running the raid. He said he even talked to the first guy through the door.

A. Some of the Iraqi doctors sent an envoy to US troops that asked for 10,000 dollars for information about her whereabouts. The envoy was escorted by feydaeen. At this point, sof decided the doctors were potential hostage keepers.

B. Like other places in Iraq, the Iraqis are just too wild to stay inside the building (remember all that street war in baghdad that never happened because they charged instead?). Iraqi regulars and irregulars were engaged _outside_ the hospital and killed.

C. Everyone the troops encountered in the hospital was flexcuffed. Standard operating procedure.

I can't believe the BBC went to to some pentagon suit to try to confirm this hoaxworthy story of theirs.
 
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