the real story of Pvt. Lynch according to the London Times

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Richard Jay Solomon <rsolomon () dsl cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 09:31:33 -0400
To: farber () cis upenn edu (David Farber)
Subject: the real story of Pvt. Lynch according to the London Times

from the London Times (a conservative, pro-war, Murdoch paper)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-648517,00.html

> April 16, 2003
> So who really did save Private Jessica?
> > From Richard Lloyd Parry in al-Nasiriyah
> Doctor claims that soldiers terrorised unarmed staff
>
> THE rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the
> most difficult periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by
> the US military, but a staged operation that terrified patients and victimised
> the doctors who had struggled to save her life, according to Iraqi witnesses.
>
>
> Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had
> met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and
> Baath leadership had fled the city.
>
> Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous
> drip, were bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the
> wards, searching for departed members of the Saddam regime.
>
> An ambulance driver who tried to carry Private Lynch to the American forces
> close to the city was shot at by US troops the day before their mission. Far
> from winning hearts and minds, the US operation has angered and hurt doctors
> who risked their lives treating both Private Lynch and Iraqi victims of the
> war. "What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor - it's a
> myth," said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch's life after she was
> brought to the hospital by Iraqi military intelligence.
>
> "They said that there was no medical care in Iraq, and that there was a very
> strong defence of this hospital. But there was no one here apart from doctors
> and patients, and there was nobody to fire at them."
>
> Dr Harith was on duty when Private Lynch was brought to al-Nasiriyah general
> by Iraqi soldiers a few days after her capture on March 23. She was a member
> of a 15-member US Army maintenance company convoy that was ambushed after
> taking a wrong turn near the city.
>
> At the time, she was suffering from a head injury, a broken leg and arm, a
> bullet wound to her leg, a pulmonary oedema and her breathing was failing. In
> a hospital inundated with war casualties with few drugs, her condition was
> stabilised and she regained consciousness.
>
> "She was very frightened when she woke up," Dr Harith, 24, a junior resident
> at the hospital, said. "She kept saying: 'Please don't hurt me, don't touch
> me.' I told her that she was safe, she was in a hospital and that I was a
> doctor, and I never hurt a patient."
>
> Private Lynch's military guards would allow no other doctor to tend to her and
> Dr Harith formed a friendship with her. She talked to him about her family,
> including her arguments about money with her father, and about her boyfriend,
> a Hispanic soldier named Ruben.
>
> Dr Harith went outside the hospital during the bombing to get supplies of
> Private Lynch's favourite drink, orange juice, and struggled to persuade her
> to eat.
>
> "I told her she needed to eat to recover, and I brought her crackers, but her
> stomach was upset. She said as a joke: 'I want to be slim.'
>
> "I see (many) patients, but she was special. She's a very simple person, a
> soldier, not well-educated. But she was very, very nice, with a lovely face
> and blonde hair."
>
> The Iraqi intelligence officers told the hospital that Private Lynch would
> soon be transferred to Baghdad, a prospect that terrified her.
>
> After her condition stabilised, they ordered Dr Harith to transfer Jessica to
> another hospital.
>
> Instead he told the ambulance driver to deliver her to one of the American
> outposts that had already been established on the ouskirts of the city.
>
> "But when he reached their checkpoint, the Americans fired at him," he said.
> On April 1 the local Baathists fled al-Nasiriyah for Baghdad and arrived at
> the hospital looking for their prize captive. Dr Harith moved her to another
> part of the hospital, and other doctors told the soldiers that he was away.
>
> "They said that they thought Jessica had died, and they didn't know where she
> was," he said. In their haste and confusion the soldiers left, leaving behind
> only a few critically injured soldiers.
>
> The American "rescue" operation came on the night of April 2. The hospital was
> bombarded and soldiers arrived in helicopters and, according to the hospital
> doctors, in tanks that pulled up outside the hospital.
>
> Most of the doctors fled to the shelter of the radiology department on the
> first floor.
>
> "We heard them firing and shouting: 'Go! Go! Go! Go!' " Dr Harith said. One
> group of soldiers dug up the graves of dead US soldiers outside the hospital,
> while another interrogated doctors about Ali Hassan al-Majid, the senior Baath
> party figure known as Chemical Ali, who had never been seen there. A third
> group looked for Private Lynch.
>
> US soldiers videotaped the rescue, but among the many scenes not shown to the
> press at US Central Command in Doha was one of four doctors who were
> handcuffed and interrogated, along with two civilian patients, one of whom was
> immobile and connected to a drip. "They were doctors, with stethoscopes round
> their necks," Dr Harith said.
>
> "Even in war, a doctor should not be treated like that."
>
> Unluckiest of all was Abdul Razaq, one of the hospital administrators, who
> took shelter from the bombardment in Private Lynch's room, believing that he
> would be safe.
>
> He was seized and taken with the US soldiers on their helicopter to their
> base, where he was held for three days in an open-air prison camp.
>
> "When he left his skin was the colour of yours," another doctor, Mahmud, said.
> "When he came back, he was black."
>
> Bizarrely, the rescuers cut open a special bed, designed for patients with bed
> sores, which had been provided for Private Lynch's use.
>
> "They took samples of sand out of it," Dr Harith said. "It was the only bed
> like it that we have, the only one in the governorate."
>
> Today, the hospital struggles on without adequate supplies of drugs and
> without running water or mains electricity.
> "There are two faces to Americans," Dr Harith said. "One is freedom and
> democracy, and giving kids sweets. The other is killing and hating my people.
> So I am very confused. I feel sad because I will never see Jessica again, and
> I feel happy because she is happy and has gone back to her life. If I could
> speak to her I would say: 'Congratulations!'"
       


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